TradesBuildersPricing 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.
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.
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 coaching hold the new numbers in place when a client pushes back.
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 rateHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
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.
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.
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.
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
Questions
Builder Business Pricing, Answered.
What margin should an Australian builder be running?
Is builders margin the same as markup?
Why do builders with plenty of work still go broke?
Builders
The Other Ways We Help Builders.
Builder Business Training
Structured training that turns what builders know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingBuilder Business Coaching
A coach who has run a trade business, in your corner, holding builders to the plan.
SystemsBuilder Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when builders are not standing there.
The free appBuilder Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for builders with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsBuilder Business Marketing
How builders get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Hiring and teamBuilder Business Hiring
How builders build a crew that does it right without being watched.
Start Tonight, For Nothing.
The Crew, daily Q&A, starter courses and your complimentary coaching session. Free with an active ABN. No card, no trial clock.
Turning over $20k a month or more? Thirty minutes, one on one with a trade business coach, on what is capping the business and what to fix first.