Trades BuildersPricing and profit

Builder Business PricingTurnover has never been higher. So why is there nothing left at the end of the job?

Pricing for builders: margin versus markup, what your overheads actually cost, how to price a fixed price contract that survives twelve months of escalation, and when a cost-plus contract is the right call. The maths that decides whether your building company survives.

Have a chat with Greg

A painted scene of a timber framed house on its slab with the roof trusses up, builders working along the top plate against an open sky

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Building Business?

You are adding a margin you inherited

Someone told you builders run twenty percent, so that is what you put on. You have never worked out what your overheads, your ute, your supervisor and your office actually cost per job, or whether that number covers them.

Margin and markup are not the same number

A twenty percent margin needs a twenty five percent markup on cost. If you have been adding twenty percent to your costs and calling it your margin, you have been short on every job you have ever priced.

The fixed price does not move but your costs do

You signed in autumn and you are pouring in spring. Frame, windows and labour have all moved. Prime cost and provisional sums were set on last year's numbers, and the client is not interested in absorbing any of it.

Under-pricing does not show up on the job you are building now, it shows up eighteen months later when the overdraft will not stretch to the next slab.

A trade business owner working alone at the kitchen table late at night, laptop open and paperwork spread across the table, work boots and tool bag by the door

Pricing and profit

Here Is What We Do About It.

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass fixes the maths: margin versus markup, overhead recovery, what to load onto direct costs. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass takes it further into what the business has to earn to pay you properly. Pricing training in the Learning Hub and Greg hold the new numbers in place when a client pushes back.

The Tradies App

Free with an active ABN in Australia and New Zealand. No card, no trial clock.

Learning Hub

The full lesson library inside the Tradies App, self paced, $199/month.

Business Foundations

Weekly live sessions hosted by Greg Allan, where you bring your own numbers.

Free tool, no sign-up

Charge-out rate calculator

Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Work out your rate

How it works

Three Steps, Starting Tonight.

Step 1

Work out what an hour really costs you

Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.

Step 2

Price off the number, not off the last bloke

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.

Step 3

Hold the price and watch what happens

The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.

Why you get me

I built the coaching company everyone else runs. Then I took it apart.

Most coaching companies work the same way. You enquire, you get a salesperson. You sign up, you get a coach who has never run a trade business.

I know, because I built one. I grew the Academy to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches. It ran without me.

And I hated it. The bigger it got, the further I was from the owners I started it for.

What gets me up in the morning is getting under the hood of a trade business and helping the owner hit their goals in the least time possible.

So I restructured the whole thing.

When you enquire, you speak to me. If you are accepted into the Academy, you work with me. Directly.

And with agentic AI, the results come sooner than most owners can imagine.

Places are limited. I only take on owners who are committed and ready to do the work.

Greg Allan mid-explanation with his hands open, talking to a trade business owner across a desk

Who you will be talking to

I built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with more than 1,950+ five-star reviews.

A general manager runs it day to day. I live in Byron Bay.

I have trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

What AI actually changes

The old way. The new way.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night. — The old way
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced. — The new way
You stay with your customers and your team. Agents run the office your way.

The old way

Grow, then hire people to do the computer work.

Every new customer brought more quoting, invoicing, chasing, scheduling and reporting.

So you hired people to do it. Office staff, bookkeepers, admin.

None of it is billable, and every hire costs wages, sick leave and another person to manage.

Profit and time only grew as fast as you could add people.

The new way

Keep the human work. Give everything else to agents.

Your people do what only people can do: looking after customers and leading the team.

Everything else goes to agents that do it your way, instantly, any time it is needed.

No sick leave. No capacity problems. They scale as far as the business does.

So the only people you add are the ones facing your customers and your team.

A human-centred business that runs on systems you build in minutes. Nobody still running the old way can compete with it.

What changes

What Building Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things building business owners walk away able to do.

Work out the markup your overheads and profit actually require, job by job

Price a fixed price contract with escalation, prime cost and provisional sums covered

Know before you sign whether a build will make money or quietly cost you

A trade business owner watching his child play sport on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand and phone face down — Nights and weekends back

A trade business owner and his partner in the kitchen looking at a tablet showing the numbers going up — Work that actually pays

A trade business owner shaking hands with a new apprentice in the work yard — A good hire who stays

A trade business owner standing calmly in the yard while his crew load two utes behind him — Out of the middle of everything

9,000+tradies trained4.9★Google rating4.9★App Store rating

Questions

Builder Business Pricing, Answered.

What margin should an Australian builder be running?

There is no single legal answer, and anyone quoting one without seeing your overheads is guessing. HIA publishes guidance on determining builders margin for its contracts, and cost-plus work commonly sits in a 15 to 25 percent band. The right number is the one that covers your overheads and leaves a profit, which is what we work out with you.

Is builders margin the same as markup?

No, and the difference costs builders money every year. Margin is measured on the sale price, markup is added to your cost. A twenty percent margin requires a twenty five percent markup. Get those two confused and you are short on every job. The Profitable Pricing Masterclass drills it until you cannot get it wrong.

Why do builders with plenty of work still go broke?

Because turnover hides thin margins and the cash lag catches up. Construction recorded 2,832 insolvencies in FY2023-24, around 27 percent of all Australian company collapses, on UNSW analysis. Most of it is under-priced fixed price work, unrecovered overheads and progress claims sitting unpaid while suppliers get paid on time.

Builders

The Other Ways We Help Builders.

Training

Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.