Trades Solar InstallersPricing and profit

Solar Business PricingPer watt is how the customer compares you. It should never be how you price the job.

Pricing for solar business owners who are quoting against a per-watt number they did not set. This is how to build a price from your real cost per installed hour, your overhead and the margin you need, then hold it when the customer waves a cheaper quote.

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A painted scene of two solar installers standing a large panel upright on a roof edge against an open sky

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Solar Business?

Your price came from a competitor, not your costs

You set your per-watt figure by looking at what the market was doing, and you have adjusted it since by feel. You do not know what an installed hour actually costs you once the van, the insurance, the accreditation, the rework and the unbillable time are in.

The rebate gets treated as your discount

The STC value comes off the quoted price, so the customer sees a number and haggles from there, and you end up funding the last cut out of your own margin. The certificates were never yours to give away, but the way you quote makes them look like it.

Variations disappear and you eat them

The switchboard needs an upgrade, the roof turns out to be two skins of tile, the network comes back with an export limit that changes the design. You do the extra work because the customer has already signed, and none of it reaches the invoice.

Underpricing does not show up as a loss, it shows up as a full diary, a tired crew and a bank balance that never moves, year after year.

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 takes you through building a price from your own numbers, and the Profit & Freedom Masterclass connects that price to what you actually take home. The Learning Hub carries the pricing training, and Greg holds you to it on the next quote you send.

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 Solar Installer Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things solar business owners walk away able to do.

Calculate your real cost per installed hour before you quote another job

Quote a variation for the switchboard or roof upgrade without flinching

Hold your price when a customer produces a cheaper per-watt quote

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

Solar Business Pricing, Answered.

What should a solar business charge per watt?

Wrong question first. Per watt is a comparison unit for the buyer, not a pricing method for you. Build the job price from labour hours at true cost, materials at a considered markup, overhead recovery and margin, then check what that comes to per watt. If the market is below you, the answer is to sell better, not to cut.

How do I price battery work now the federal rebate is running?

Price the work, not the rebate. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program changes what the customer pays, and the rebate steps down over time, so a price built on it moves under you. Cost the install, the switchboard work, the compliance and the clearances properly, then show the rebate as a reduction to what they owe.

How much deposit can I ask for on a solar job?

It depends on the state, and getting it wrong is a fair trading problem, not a cash flow one. New South Wales caps residential building deposits at 10 per cent, Victoria works differently and Western Australia has its own threshold. Check your own state's rules, then design payment terms that protect you inside them.

Solar Installers

The Other Ways We Help Solar Installers.

Training

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