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Stop Guessing: A Small Business Guide to Building Your Price Book

As a small business owner, pricing your services can be the most stressful part of the job. If you charge by the hour, you get penalized for being fast and efficient. If you guess at a fixed price, you risk underbidding and losing money on a job that takes longer than expected. This constant uncertainty makes it hard to quote jobs with confidence and even harder to build a predictable, profitable business.

Flat rate pricing is the solution. It’s a strategy where you charge a single, upfront price for a specific job, regardless of how long it takes. A well-built price book is the key to this model. It allows you to calculate prices that consistently cover your parts, labor, and overhead, ensuring you make a profit on every single job. This guide will walk you through how to use our template to build your own price book and take control of your company’s profitability.

What to Include in a Professional Price Book

A profitable price book is a carefully calculated list of every service you offer. It’s your main tool for creating fast, consistent estimates. To be effective, it needs to be built on your real costs.

• Your Company Information: Your price book should feature your company name, logo, address, and contact information. This makes your final printable report look professional.
• Your Core Costs: The prices must be based on your unique business costs. This includes:

1. 1. Labor Cost per Hour: What you charge for a standard hour of work.
   2. After Hours Labor Cost per Hour: Your premium rate for evenings or weekends.
   3. After Hours Surcharge: A flat fee you add to any non-standard service call.

• Itemized Services: Your price book should be broken down into every service you perform. For each service, you need two key pieces of data:

1. 1. Item Cost: The cost of any materials or parts needed for the job.
   2. Estimated Hours: The average time it takes a technician to complete that job.

• Calculated Final Prices: With the costs and time entered, the template automatically generates two final prices for you:

1. 1. Standard Price: The profitable flat rate you charge during normal business hours.
   2. After Hours Price: The premium flat rate you charge for emergency calls.

Building Your Price Book: A Template Walkthrough

Our Google Sheet template is a powerful calculator designed to make creating your flat rate price list simple and accurate. For your convenience, a copy of these instructions is also included on the ‘Instructions’ tab within the Google Sheet itself.

Important First Step: Make a Copy of the Template Before you begin, you must save a copy of the Google Sheet to your own Google Drive. The original template is view-only, ensuring every user gets a clean version. To make your own editable copy:

1. Open the Google Sheet.
2. Go to the File menu in the top-left corner.
3. Select Make a copy. Your new, editable version will open, and you can now follow the steps below.

Step 1: Customize with Your Business Information Open your copied Google Sheet and go to the “Input Details” tab. Replace the placeholder logo and enter your company’s name, address, phone number, and email.

Step 2: Enter Your Labor Costs In the same “Input Details” tab, fill in your core labor rates. Enter your Labor Cost per Hour, After Hours Labor Cost per Hour, and any flat After Hours Surcharge. Save this file as your master template.

Step 3: List Your Services, Costs, and Time Navigate to the “Price Book” tab. This is where you will build your list of services, organized by category. For each service you offer (e.g., “Toilet flapper” under “Accessories”), fill in two cells:

• Item Cost: The price of the flapper (e.g., $15).
• Estimated Hours: The time it takes to do the job (e.g., 0.5 hours).

Step 4: Get Your Automated Prices As you fill out Step 3, the template instantly does the calculations for you based on the formulas in the “Instructions” tab. In the same row, you will see two prices automatically appear:

• Standard Price
• After Hours Price

Repeat this process for all your services to build your complete price list.

Step 5: Review Your Printable Price Book Once your prices are calculated, click the “Printable Report – Full Summary” tab. This tab collects all your services and prices into a clean, professional document that you can print and put in every truck or save as a PDF.

Why Upfront Pricing is Better for You and Your Customers

Switching from hourly billing to a flat rate model can transform your business, making it more profitable and professional.

1. It Increases Customer Trust with Upfront Pricing Customers are often nervous about hourly billing. They watch the clock, fearing the final bill will be much higher than expected. A flat rate price eliminates this anxiety. You provide a firm, upfront cost before any work begins, which builds immediate trust and makes it easier for the customer to say yes.
2. It Rewards Your Efficiency When you charge by the hour, you get paid less for being fast and experienced. With flat rate pricing, you are rewarded for your efficiency. If a job takes you 1 hour instead of the 1.5 hours in your price book, that extra 30 minutes of labor charge becomes pure profit.
3. It Creates Consistent and Fair Pricing A flat rate price book ensures that every technician on your team is quoting the same price for the same job. This consistency is professional and fair to your customers. It reinforces your company’s reputation for honesty and reliability, no matter who is on the call.

Is Your Price List Stuck in a Spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet is a powerful tool for calculating your prices, but it’s difficult to use in the field. Your techs have to flip through pages, and if you update a price in the office, the printed copies in your trucks are instantly wrong. This leads to incorrect estimates and lost profit.

Housecall Pro’s software transforms your spreadsheet into a dynamic, digital price book that’s connected to your entire business.

Build a Visual Price Book Your Team Will Actually Use Turn your price list into a professional, digital catalog. In Housecall Pro, you can add photos and detailed descriptions for every service. Your team can easily pull up this price book on a tablet in a customer’s home to show them exactly what they are getting, making it easier to sell the job.

Update Prices for Your Whole Team Instantly When the cost of a part goes up, you can no longer afford to use an old spreadsheet. With Housecall Pro, you can update a price in your office, and it’s instantly updated for everyone in the field. This ensures your team is always quoting the most accurate, profitable price.

Create Good-Better-Best Estimates in Seconds Don’t just offer one price. Housecall Pro’s price book allows you to build tiered estimates with multiple options (e.g., a basic repair, a better replacement, and a premium, long-term solution). This empowers customers to choose a higher-priced option, dramatically increasing your average job value.

Ready to Price Every Job with Confidence?

Confident, consistent pricing is the foundation of a successful small business. Our free template gives you the power to calculate profitable flat rate prices and remove the guesswork from quoting. When you’re ready to turn that price list into a dynamic sales tool that wins bigger jobs, Housecall Pro is the ultimate solution.

Try Housecall Pro free for 14 days — and turn your price list into consistent quotes and steady profits year-round.