A full diary feels like success. It isn't the same thing as a profitable one. Plenty of tradesmen are flat out twelve months a year and still can't explain where the money went — because the pricing was set once, at the quoting stage, and never checked against what the job actually cost to run.
Why "cost plus a bit" isn't a pricing strategy
Most quotes get built the same way: guess the materials, guess the days, multiply by a day rate, add a bit for luck. It works fine until a supplier price rise, a scope change the client "forgot" to mention, or a job that just runs long. Proper pricing means starting from what the job will genuinely cost — including the costs that don't show up until you're tracking them job by job — then adding a margin that's a deliberate decision, not whatever's left over.
The costs that get missed at quoting stage
- Waste and off-cuts — nobody uses 100% of what they buy. Pricing exactly to the metre or board leaves no room for reality.
- Travel and parking — especially on jobs spread across a city, or anywhere with congestion charging.
- Skip hire and disposal — easy to forget until the job's underway and there's nowhere to put the rubble.
- Your own admin time — quoting, invoicing, chasing payment. It's real time, and it's rarely priced in.
- A contingency line — not padding, just an honest allowance for the fact that older properties in particular rarely go exactly to plan.
Quote in ranges where the job genuinely is uncertain
Fixed-price quoting works well for jobs you've done a hundred times. For anything with unknowns — what's behind that wall, what state that wiring's really in — a fixed price either builds in so much contingency it's uncompetitive, or it's a guess that becomes an argument later. A day-rate-plus-materials structure, or a quote with an explicit "if we find X, it's an extra" clause, protects margin without inflating every quote to cover a risk that might not happen.
Check the job against the quote while it's still running
The single biggest fix here isn't a smarter quoting formula — it's knowing, mid-job, whether you're tracking to the number you quoted. A job that's already 30% over on materials in week one is a job you can still have a conversation about. The same job discovered over-budget after the invoice has gone out is just a loss, with no reasonable window to do anything about it. Tagging every receipt and cost to the job as it happens is what makes that mid-job check possible — see our job costing guide for the full mechanics of that habit.
A rough worked example
Quote a kitchen re-wire at £2,800, with £600 budgeted for cable, consumer unit and fittings. If costs are tagged to the job as they're bought, by the halfway point you can see materials already sitting at £520 with two rooms still to go — a clear early signal to flag before the job's finished, not a surprise discovered when the final invoice barely covers the van's diesel for the month.
Mistakes that quietly wreck a healthy margin
- Quoting from memory instead of last time's actual costs for a similar job.
- No contingency line on anything involving existing structure, wiring or plumbing.
- Never revisiting the quote once a job's underway, even when the scope visibly changes.
- Absorbing "small" extras for free to keep a client happy, without noticing how often "small" adds up.
- Pricing every job the same regardless of how well-understood the work actually is.
FAQ
Should I always quote fixed price?
Not for anything genuinely uncertain. A day-rate or "subject to survey" structure protects margin better than an inflated fixed price that's uncompetitive, or an accurate-looking one that quietly assumes nothing goes wrong.
How much contingency should I add?
There's no universal number — it depends on the trade and the job. The habit that matters more than the exact percentage is checking actual cost against quote while the job's still running, so a contingency that's too thin gets caught early rather than discovered as a loss.
Does this replace proper job costing?
No — it depends on it. Pricing decisions are only as good as the real cost data feeding them. Track job costs properly first; better pricing follows from actually knowing what jobs cost, not the other way round.