Paying for the trip and walkthrough

[JoeNorm]

Lets say a homeowner calls with their laundry list of things they want done. Often this warrants a trip to look.

How do you charge for the walk though and talking with the client? I have spent 2 hours walking around with homeowners in these situations. Is it standard to tack it onto the bill at the hourly rate?

 

[paulengr]

Lets say a homeowner calls with their laundry list of things they want done. Often this warrants a trip to look.

How do you charge for the walk though and talking with the client? I have spent 2 hours walking around with homeowners in these situations. Is it standard to tack it onto the bill at the hourly rate?

It’s called S&GA. Nonbillable. Quotes are generally not billed. It’s overhead. If you can get HO to pay good luck. Best you can do is suggest quoting the big job and then doing the others while you are there. I gotta go…scheduled for somewhere else. The reason you are billing way more than costs is that office/sales costs money. Small jobs have higher overhead and should be charged accordingly. If the guy down the street can do it cheaper, let them. They will be broke and working for you next year. Too many misses on quotes or letting overhead get out of control puts you out of business.

On large jobs it’s customary to do draws and one of the first ones is engineering and estimating but it’s small (under 10%), typical on a large $100k+ job where you need stamped drawings and so forth. Rare on residential.

 

[SSDriver]

I charge for a service charge and duscuss rates before i go out. I do not go anywhere for free.

 

[RWC/NC.]

Most Service Companies, will charge for both the vehicle rate & man-hour rate, for the "first hour". For the following second hour, the vehicle "rate" is dropped, then billing for just the "man hour service rate". Believe I'd possibly be looking somewhere @ the "happy medium" rate right now, of first hour(s) between accommodation for your personal time. It`s all depending on competitiveness, and location (distance) personally having to travel, in giving this estimate & cost.

 

[Fred B]

With price of fuel now something has to give. These 2 hr walk through are really 3 to 3.5 hr with drive time around here. It'll automatically now cost me a $30 bill just to go see the job, plus the lost 4hr @ rate, just for the guy "Just wondering what would cost to do XX.", to get a price to judge against the handiman he wanted to use anyway.
And top that off with fixed cost increases like the insurances 20% bump, plus skyrocketing materials almost daily cost increases it's starting to look like a construction crash is coming like we had in the 70's, where a lot of contractors went out of business.

 

[Tulsa Electrician]

What I did was charge for the trip and time. Then if they awarded the job I was returned as a deduction on there billing. Most I did just wanted me to come fix stuff easy work and quote the others which I could do while on site. This way there happy on both ends. The helper can fix light etc while I look at scope of work. This way the owner feels like like they got service for the money.
I also would let them change scope after I was paid or a new t&m ticket was started.
It is only far to both parties.
Either way there paying for an hour( 15 min travel,40 minutes work, 5 minutes paper work) so I let them choose.
Unless they offered me a cup of coffee or where a veterans wife. Then the service was free. Usually the job was too.

 

[James L]

This is where most guys don't understand what's supposed to be built into their rates.

If you're running a service truck, only1/2 of what you charge for labor is for the actual labor to do the work.

The other half of what you charge is for administrative, other overhead, profit, etc - including free trips to visit tire kickers.

Lots of guys get the idea that $100+ per hour is their labor. And get spoiled into thinking they're gonna take home all that "labor"

Then they're extremely disappointed when they "waste" time doing a free estimate that doesn't turn into a job. Or bellyaching about fuel costs going up.

If you start thinking about it in terms of half and half, then you can waste time with a smile. Or go back on a warranty job with a smile.

Why? Because you've already been prepaid for it.
That's all supposed to be built into your rate. Half for you, and half to spend on non-paying bull crap.

Here's the way I like to say it-
Everyone who says yes has to pitch in to help pay for all the time you spent with everyone who said no.

 

[LarryFine]

Just yesterday, I went to do what started out as a service call about five minutes away for a few small problems, became a free estimate call to evaluate, then fixed everything in ten minutes and charged half my usual 1-hour minimum. Customer was happy and will most likely call again.