Trades PaintersPricing and profit

Painter Business PricingA rate per square metre you copied off a cost guide is not a price. It is a guess.

Pricing for painting business owners who quote per square metre, per job or per house and are not certain any of it clears. This is how to build a painting price from your real costs up, then hold it when the client says someone else is cheaper.

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A painted scene of a painter in whites on a step ladder, cutting in the verandah of a Victorian terrace with iron lacework above him

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Painting Business?

Your square metre rate came from somewhere else

Published cost guides put interior work around $15 to $45 per square metre and exteriors higher, so you picked a number in the middle and stuck with it. It has never been checked against your award labour cost, your paint bill or your overheads.

Paint goes up between the quote and the job

You quoted the estate in March and start in July. Trade prices have moved, the tint has gone up, and the fixed rate you signed has not. On a job with any volume, a small rise on every tin quietly takes the whole margin.

The prep was never in the price

You quote coats because coats are easy to count. Then it is sugar soaping, filling, sanding back, spot priming and two days of it before a topcoat goes near the wall. Prep is where painting jobs go under, and it is the line nobody prices honestly.

Underprice by a little on every job and you will work a full year at capacity, exhausted, and finish it with nothing in the bank.

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 shows you how to build a painting charge-out rate from the ground up: award labour under MA000020, paint and consumables, overhead recovery, then margin. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass takes it further into what the business must earn to buy you time off, and Greg keeps your prices there.

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 Painting Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things painting business owners walk away able to do.

Build a square metre rate from your own labour, paint and overhead costs.

Price prep as its own line so a blowout does not eat the job.

Hold your price on a quote instead of dropping it to match a lowballer.

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

Painter Business Pricing, Answered.

Should I quote per square metre or by the job?

Quote the client by the job, but build it per square metre internally so you can check it. The client sees one honest price with the scope and coats spelled out. You see the rate per metre it works out to, which tells you instantly whether it clears. The Profitable Pricing Masterclass sets that up.

Why is my quote losing money at the rate everyone else charges?

Because their rate is not your cost. Your award labour under the Fair Work Building and Construction Award MA000020 carries tool, industry and travel allowances, plus super and downtime. Add paint, consumables, vehicles, insurance and the hours you spend quoting at night, and the real number sits well above the rate you copied.

The client says another painter is thousands cheaper. What do I say?

Show the difference instead of arguing about it. Spell out the prep, the number of coats, the products and the warranty in your quote, so the client can see what the cheap price leaves out. Then hold your number. Greg gets you practising that conversation before you are standing in someone's lounge room.

Painters

The Other Ways We Help Painters.

Training

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