Trades CarpentersPricing and profit

Carpenter Business PricingYour day rate has barely moved in years. Timber, fuel, insurance and wages all have.

Pricing for carpentry business owners: how to build a charge-out rate from your real cost floor instead of copying the bloke down the road, and how to hold it when a builder pushes back on a square rate for the frame.

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A painted scene of three carpenters on a slab standing timber wall frames upright, tool belts on, a nail gun and offcuts at their feet

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Carpentry Business?

You priced it off what the last bloke charges

You set your hourly rate years ago by asking around, and you have nudged it since without ever working out what it costs to have you and a first year on site for a day. You do not know your floor, so you cannot defend your price.

The frame took eleven days, you quoted eight

Wet weather, a late truss delivery and a slab that was out took the job three days over. There was no allowance for any of it in the price, so those three days came out of your margin and you still paid the crew.

Your charge-out rate is basically your wage

You charge out a chippy at barely more than you pay one, so the ute, the tools, the insurance, the accountant and the hours you spend quoting are all funded by nothing. Every extra body on site quietly makes the business worse, not better.

Price too low for long enough and the busiest year of your life ends with a full calendar, a tired crew and nothing left in the account.

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 and the Profit & Freedom Masterclass show you how to build a rate from your own numbers: award wages under MA000020, the industry and tool allowances, overheads, downtime and the margin you actually need. Pricing training in the Learning Hub and Greg keep the new price in place.

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 Carpentry Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things carpentry business owners walk away able to do.

Calculate a charge-out rate that covers wages, allowances, overheads and margin

Quote a frame or a fixout with a real allowance for weather and delays

Hold your price when a builder tells you the last crew was cheaper

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

Carpenter Business Pricing, Answered.

How do I work out my charge-out rate as a carpenter?

Start from cost, not from the market. Take the award wage for the classification you are paying, add the allowances MA000020 requires, add on-costs like super, workers compensation and leave, then add your overheads and the productive hours you actually bill. That gives your floor. Margin goes on top of the floor, never inside it.

Why is my charge-out rate higher than what I pay a chippy?

Because the wage is only part of the cost. Under MA000020 a carpenter also attracts an industry allowance of $64.10 a week and a tool allowance of $38.60 a week, plus super, workers compensation, leave and public holidays. Then the ute, the tools, the insurance and your unbilled quoting hours sit on top. The rate carries all of it.

Should I price framing by the hour, by the day or per square?

Whichever you use, work it back to the same cost floor. Builders often want framing priced per square or per square metre, which is fine as long as you have converted your hourly floor into that measure for that type of build. Day rates suit variable work. What kills margin is switching between them without checking the maths.

Carpenters

The Other Ways We Help Carpenters.

Training

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