TradesPlumbersPricing and profit
Plumber Business PricingBusy all year and still short at BAS time means the price is wrong, not the workload.
Pricing for plumbing business owners who set their hourly rate years ago and have been nudging it since. Build a charge-out rate from your real labour cost, on-costs, overheads and margin, and price callouts, after-hours and contract work so they all make money.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Plumbing Business?
Your rate came from the bloke down the road
You set your hourly rate by asking around and shading it a bit under. It has never been built from your actual labour cost, superannuation, vehicle, insurance and overhead, so you genuinely do not know which of your jobs make money and which ones you subsidise.
The award went up and your prices did not
Minimum rates under the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award lift every 1 July, and so do super, insurance and the merchant's prices. If your charge-out rate is the same as last winter, you have quietly given away the difference on every hour you sell.
After hours costs you more than it pays
The 10pm burst pipe gets billed at your normal rate plus a bit, while the plumber attending is on penalty rates and you are paying for a night's sleep nobody got. Emergency work should be your best margin, and for most plumbing businesses it is the worst.
Underpricing does not show up as a loss, it shows up as a busy year with nothing in the bank, and it repeats until you change the number.
Pricing and profit
Here Is What We Do About It.
The Profitable Pricing Masterclass shows you how to build a charge-out rate from the ground up, and the Profit & Freedom Masterclass connects that price to the money you actually take home. The Learning Hub adds the ongoing pricing training, and Greg holds you to the new number when a customer 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.
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.
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.
More customers meant more people doing your computer work, and you paying for all of it.
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 Plumbing Business Pricing Actually Changes.
Three things plumbing business owners walk away able to do.
Build a charge-out rate from award cost, on-costs, overhead and margin
Set a callout fee and an after-hours rate that cover penalty rates
Quote a bathroom or a fit-off knowing the margin before you send it
Questions
Plumber Business Pricing, Answered.
What should a plumber charge per hour in Australia?
Why is my charge-out rate so much higher than what I pay my plumbers?
How do I raise prices without losing my regular customers?
Plumbers
The Other Ways We Help Plumbers.
Plumber Business Training
Structured training that turns what plumbers know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingPlumber Business Coaching
Greg Allan in your corner, holding plumbers to the plan. By application.
SystemsPlumber Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when plumbers are not standing there.
The free appPlumber Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for plumbers with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsPlumber Business Marketing
How plumbers get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Hiring and teamPlumber Business Hiring
How plumbers build a crew that does it right without being watched.
Have a Chat With Greg About Your Business.
An hour with Greg, one on one, about anything in your trade business. By application: if his diary is full, you join his waitlist and he invites you. He only takes owners who are committed.