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How to set a price range for any service job, starting from your own numbers

Copying a competitor's price tells you what they charge, not whether you make money at it. This guide shows how to build a price range from three things you can measure yourself: what an hour of your time has to earn, how fast you actually work, and what every job costs before you start.

About the numbers here: every figure in the examples is hypothetical and only illustrates the arithmetic. They are not market rates. Use your own costs, and check your local market before you publish anything.

1. Work out what a billable hour must earn

Start with the year, not the job. Add up what the business has to cover:

  • Your pay: what you need to take home, before personal tax.
  • Overhead: insurance, vehicle, fuel, equipment replacement, phone, software, marketing, accounting.
  • Profit: a margin on top, so the business can absorb a slow month or a broken pressure washer without you skipping a paycheck.

Then estimate billable hours: time spent actually doing paid work on site. This is the step most people get wrong. Driving, quoting, buying supplies, invoicing, rain days and the off-season aren't billable. For many owner-operators, half to two-thirds of working time is billable. Track a few real weeks if you can instead of guessing.

Hypothetical example. Pay target $55,000 + overhead $14,000 = $69,000 a year. 46 working weeks × 40 hours = 1,840 hours, of which 60% is billable = 1,104 billable hours. $69,000 ÷ 1,104 = $62.50 per billable hour to break even. For a 15% profit margin, divide by 0.85: about $74 per billable hour.

Materials that scale with the job (chemicals, mulch, parts, dump fees) should be priced per unit on top of this, not folded into the hourly figure.

2. Time your jobs and get a production rate

Customers don't buy hours. They buy square feet of driveway, linear feet of gutter, rooms, windows. So you need to know how many units you complete per hour. That's your production rate.

For the next 10–20 jobs, write down: the quantity (sq ft, ft, rooms), the conditions (stories, stain level, pets) and the minutes on site from arrival to departure, including setup and cleanup. A note in your phone is enough. You'll get two useful numbers out of it:

  • Your fast rate: easy jobs, good access, light soil.
  • Your slow rate: typical tough jobs. Ignore one-off disasters; those get quoted in person.
Hypothetical example (driveway cleaning). Eight timed jobs worked out between 450 and 700 sq ft per hour, setup included.

3. Convert to a per-unit low and high

Divide your hourly target by each production rate. The fast rate gives the low end of your per-unit price, and the slow rate gives the high end. Then add per-unit materials to both.

Hypothetical example. $74 ÷ 700 sq ft/h = $0.106 per sq ft. $74 ÷ 450 sq ft/h = $0.164 per sq ft. Add $0.02/sq ft for chemicals: $0.13–$0.18 per sq ft after rounding.

This is why a range is honest rather than evasive. The spread comes from real variation in your work, and the customer can see where they'll probably land. If your spread is very wide (say, the high is more than double the low), split the service into separate lines or add a modifier for the condition that causes it. A range that wide stops being useful to the customer.

4. Set a minimum ticket

Every job costs something before any work happens: loading, setup, teardown and walking the customer through it. On a small job that fixed time can be most of the visit. A minimum ticket makes sure a 200 sq ft patio still pays for the trip.

A simple way to set it: shortest realistic visit (hours) × your hourly target, rounded up.

Hypothetical example. Setup and teardown take about 25 minutes, and even a small job takes 35 minutes of work, so the shortest real visit is 1 hour. 1 × $74 → $75 minimum. In PriceRange Kit, if the per-unit math comes out below the minimum, the range starts at the minimum.

5. Turn job differences into multipliers and add-ons

Look back at your timed jobs and group them by the condition that changed the time: a second story, heavy staining, pets, a steep roof. Compare average production rates:

  • If two-story jobs ran at 70% of your one-story pace, that's a multiplier of 1 ÷ 0.7 ≈ 1.4.
  • If something costs a fixed amount regardless of size (a downspout flush, a timer install, a new vent cap), make it an add-on with a flat price.

Keep the list short. Three or four modifiers that really move the price are better than ten that confuse people. Anything rare or hard to judge from a description belongs in "final price confirmed after inspection".

6. Sanity-check before you publish

  • Run three real past jobs through the calculator. Would the range have contained what you actually charged, or should have charged?
  • Compare with your local market. If you land far below competitors, your billable-hours estimate is probably optimistic, or you're leaving money on the table. Check before you undercut. If you land far above, look at your production rate and overhead before you discount.
  • Say what's included. One line under the price ("Includes cleanup. Final price after a quick look on site.") prevents most disputes.
  • Revisit every season. Fuel, insurance and your own speed change.

7. Worksheet: try it with your numbers

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See it as a customer would

Here's the pressure-washing template with sample numbers. Swap in your own in the builder.

Trade-specific walkthroughs: how to price gutter cleaning · how to price holiday light installation.