Electrical Flat Rate Price Book: Build One Without Expensive Software

You know you should be charging flat rate. Nearly every business podcast, nearly every industry event, nearly every successful shop owner tells you the same thing. But then you look at the price of the software, see $259 per tech per month, and close the browser tab. You're not paying more than your truck payment for a glorified spreadsheet.

Here's the thing - building an electrical flat rate price book doesn't require expensive software. You can do it yourself.

The Real Cost of Not Having a Flat Rate Price Book

If you're still running time and materials on residential service calls, you're punishing yourself for being good at your job. Think about that for a second. The faster you work, the less you earn. A fan install that takes a veteran 45 minutes pays less than when the new guy takes two hours.

With T&M pricing, many residential electrical contractors - especially those not fully accounting for labor burden and unbilled time - end up with gross margins somewhere between 15-25%. That's the range you see in competitive bid work and new construction - not service calls where you're driving a $60,000 van to someone's house.

The common target range recommended by industry consultants and organizations like Nexstar and EGIA for residential service and repair work is 60-67% gross profit margin. That's not greedy. That's what it takes to cover the truck roll, the drive time, the insurance, the unbillable hours, and still have money left to keep the lights on at home.

Let's do some quick math. Say you're running three techs doing four service calls a day each. That's roughly 60 calls a week. If your average ticket is $350 at a 20% margin, you're making $70 per call in gross profit - $4,200 a week.

Now here's the key insight about flat rate pricing electrical contractors discover: it doesn't just change how you present prices - it forces you to calculate what you actually need to charge. When you run the real numbers on labor burden, overhead, and profit, most contractors discover their ticket prices need to go up. If those same jobs are correctly priced at, say, $575 average ticket to hit a 60% gross margin, that's $345 per call in gross profit - $20,700 a week. The difference over a year? That's potentially hundreds of thousands in gross profit you've been leaving on the table.

And here's what most people miss - flat rate pricing doesn't mean arbitrarily charging more. It means charging correctly. You're baking overhead and profit into a transparent, upfront price instead of hoping your hourly rate covers everything.

Why Most Electrical Contractors Never Build a Flat Rate Price Book

The biggest barrier isn't the math. It's the overwhelm.

A full price book for electrical work can contain hundreds of tasks. Every type of outlet, every switch configuration, every panel size, every wire run scenario. The idea of sitting down and calculating a price for each one feels like building a house one brick at a time - while you're still doing service calls all day.

Then there's the software pitch. Companies sell pre-built flat rate books bundled with their field service management platforms. Some of these can run $259 per tech per month. For a 5-tech shop, that's over $15,000 a year before you've wired a single outlet. As one contractor put it online, some of that software "is like the Gucci of software - everyone buys that just to say they bought that."

So most owners do nothing. They stick with T&M because it's what they know, and they tell themselves they'll "figure out flat rate eventually." Eventually never comes.

The truth is, you don't need to build a 500-task price book on day one. You don't need expensive software. You need a spreadsheet, your real numbers, and about 20 tasks to start.

How to Build a Flat Rate Price Book: The Four Ingredients of Every Price

Before you touch a spreadsheet, you need to understand what goes into a flat rate price. Every single task in your book needs four numbers. Get these wrong, and you'll either price yourself out of work or slowly bleed money.

1. True labor cost (not the hourly wage)

This is where most contractors get it wrong. If you're paying a tech $40/hour, your labor cost isn't $40/hour. You need to add the labor burden - taxes, workers' comp, insurance, benefits. Labor burden typically ranges from 20-40% on top of the hourly wage, depending on your benefits package and jurisdiction. A safe middle ground is 30%.

So that $40/hour tech actually costs you $52/hour.

But we're still not done. That tech gets paid for 8 hours, but they're only turning a wrench for about 6 of those hours. The rest is drive time, supply runs, lunch, and paperwork. That's roughly 75% efficiency.

Your true labor cost: $52 / 0.75 = $69.33/hour.

If you've been dividing your overhead by 8 billable hours instead of 6, you've been underpricing every single job. This is the kind of math trap that separates shops struggling at single-digit net profit from shops running at 15%.

2. Material cost

This one seems straightforward, but it has a catch. Material prices fluctuate - copper and steel can shift week to week. Your price book needs to reflect what you're paying today, not what you paid six months ago.

For each task, list every material needed and the current cost from your supplier. Don't use Home Depot pricing unless that's genuinely where you buy. Use your actual supply house prices.

3. Overhead allocation

Overhead is the silent killer. It's your van payment, fuel, insurance, rent, office supplies, phone bill, software subscriptions - everything that costs money whether you do a job or not.

Overhead as a percentage of total sales varies widely depending on your business model, size, and how you classify costs - it can range from the teens to 30%+ for residential service contractors. You need to know your actual number. Add up your annual overhead costs, divide by the number of billable hours you expect to produce, and you've got your overhead cost per hour.

Here's the critical point: for residential service work targeting 60%+ gross margins, your overhead allocation per hour will likely be significantly higher than in construction or commercial work. If your annual overhead is $240,000 and your team produces 6,000 billable hours a year, your overhead rate is $40/hour. Run your own numbers - don't guess.

4. Target profit margin

This is the part where you give yourself permission to make money. Your target net profit margin should be 10-20%. Below 10%, one bad job or one wrecked van puts you in crisis.

Now here's the critical math that trips people up. If you want a 20% profit margin, you don't add 20% to your costs. That's markup, not margin. A 20% markup on $1,000 in costs gives you a $1,200 price - but $200/$1,200 is only a 16.6% margin. Over a year of $1M in revenue, that 3.4% gap is a $34,000 mistake.

To convert your target margin to the right markup: divide your costs by (1 minus your target margin).

$1,000 / (1 - 0.20) = $1,000 / 0.80 = $1,250.

That's the price you need for a true 20% net margin.

Building Your First 20 Tasks (Step by Step)

You don't need 500 tasks to start. You need the 20 jobs your techs do most often. For most residential electrical shops, that list looks something like this:

• Outlet install (standard)
• Outlet install (GFCI)
• Switch replacement
• Dimmer switch install
• Ceiling fan install (existing wiring)
• Ceiling fan install (new wiring)
• Light fixture swap
• Recessed light install
• Whole home surge protector install
• Panel upgrade (100A to 200A)
• Breaker replacement (standard)
• Breaker replacement (AFCI/GFCI)
• Dedicated circuit install
• Smoke detector install (hardwired)
• EV charger install (Level 2)
• Outdoor outlet install
• Troubleshooting/diagnostic (first hour)
• Under-cabinet lighting install
• Bathroom exhaust fan install
• Generator interlock/inlet box install

Open a spreadsheet. Create columns for:

Task name: What the customer sees

Estimated time: How long this takes your average tech (not your fastest, not your slowest)

True labor cost: Estimated time x your true labor cost per hour

Materials: List and cost of every material needed

Overhead allocation: Estimated time x your overhead rate per hour

Subtotal: Add labor + materials + overhead

Selling price: Subtotal / (1 - target margin)

Let's walk through a ceiling fan install with existing wiring. For this example, we'll use an overhead rate of $40/hour, which is more realistic for a residential service operation targeting healthy margins:

Estimated time: 1.5 hours

True labor cost: 1.5 x $69.33 = $104.00 (rounded)

Materials: Fan bracket, wire nuts, electrical tape = $15 (customer provides the fan)

Overhead allocation: 1.5 x $40 = $60.00

Subtotal: $179.00

Selling price at 20% net margin: $179 / 0.80 = $223.75

Round to $225 or $229. That's your flat rate for a fan install. The customer doesn't see the breakdown - they see one number, upfront, before work starts. And notice: at this price, your gross margin (revenue minus direct labor and materials) comes out to about 47%. If your overhead is higher or you want to hit that 60%+ gross margin target, you'll need to adjust your overhead rate or margin target upward. Run your own numbers and see where you land.

Now do this for all 20 tasks. It'll take you a few hours on a Saturday morning. That's it. You'll have a working electrical flat rate price book by lunch.

Presenting Flat Rate Prices to Customers

The biggest fear contractors have with flat rate isn't the math - it's the conversation. "What if they think I'm too expensive?"

Here's what actually happens. When you show a customer a flat rate price before you start work, you're giving them something T&M never provides: certainty. No surprises. No meter running while they watch nervously.

Your tech shows up, diagnoses the issue, and says: "To install a dedicated 20-amp circuit for your home office, the price is $395. That covers everything - labor, materials, cleanup, and our warranty. Want me to get started?" (Note: pricing for dedicated circuits varies significantly by market, panel access, run distance, and permit requirements - this is just an example.)

Compare that to: "My rate is $95/hour and I think it'll take about three hours, plus materials, so probably somewhere around $350-$400, give or take."

The first version sounds professional. The second sounds like a guess.

Train your techs to present two or three options when possible - a basic fix, a recommended solution, and a premium option. This is standard practice in successful service businesses, and it lets the customer choose their comfort level instead of just saying yes or no to a single number.

If you want more context on how service call margins should actually work, that's worth reviewing alongside your price book build.

Keeping Your Electrical Flat Rate Price Book Current

A price book that's six months out of date is worse than no price book at all. You'll be quoting prices based on old material costs and wondering why your margins are shrinking.

Set a quarterly review. Block two hours every January, April, July, and October to:

• Update material costs from your supplier's current price list
• Adjust labor costs if you've given raises or your insurance changed
• Recalculate overhead if you've added a truck, hired office staff, or taken on new expenses
• Review actual job times versus your estimates - if your guys are consistently finishing fan installs in 1 hour instead of 1.5, you can either adjust the time or keep the price and enjoy better margins

This is also where you add new tasks. After your first quarter of flat rate pricing, you'll notice gaps. Tasks that come up regularly but aren't in the book. Add 5-10 new tasks each quarter and you'll have a comprehensive book within a year.

Keep in mind that pricing regulations vary - check your state and local regulations for any requirements around how you present pricing or what disclosures you need to make. Some jurisdictions have specific rules about written estimates for work over a certain dollar amount.

A Better Way to Build and Maintain Your Price Book

Building your first 20-task price book in a spreadsheet is absolutely doable by hand. But scaling it to 200 tasks, keeping material prices current, and adjusting for regional cost differences - that's where the manual approach starts to grind.

This is one of those areas where AI tools genuinely help. You can feed your supplier price lists into an AI system and have it populate material costs across hundreds of tasks in minutes instead of hours. When copper prices jump, you update one source and the entire book recalculates.

AI can also analyze your actual job data - how long tasks really take, which jobs have the highest margins, where you're consistently underpricing - and suggest adjustments. It's like having a business analyst who works at 2 AM and doesn't need health insurance.

The key insight from shops that have figured out flat rate vs. time and materials is that flat rate isn't a one-time project. It's a living system. And living systems need maintenance that's either going to eat your evenings or get automated.

You don't need the $259/month enterprise platform to get there. But you do need a system for keeping your numbers honest. Whether that's a disciplined quarterly spreadsheet review or an AI tool that does it automatically depends on how many tasks you're managing and how much your time is worth.

For most shops under 10 techs, a well-maintained spreadsheet plus some AI assistance for updates is the sweet spot. It gives you most of the benefit at a fraction of the cost of the big platforms.

The SBA's financial management resources are also worth bookmarking - they've got free tools and guides for small business financial planning that complement your price book work.

Start This Weekend

You don't need permission, expensive software, or a perfect system. You need your real overhead number, your true labor cost, and a few hours on a Saturday.

Build your first 20 tasks. Use them on Monday. Adjust as you learn. Add more tasks each month.

A year from now, you'll wonder why you waited so long to stop selling your time by the hour and start selling solutions at a fair price.

If you want help building your price book or setting up a system that keeps it current automatically, let's talk.