Price the job before you take it

How much do I charge for my services?

Accounting tools tell you how a job went after the money has moved. Priscale tells you whether a price will make money before you send it. It’s the tool you need before you need a QuickBooks.

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Pricing Spectrum Loss Break-even Profit

Break-even $625

Selected

$925 +$300

$325 Market Value $1,195

The Priscale dashboard showing the year’s revenue, profit, margin and pipeline for a landscaping business

The dashboard: this year’s revenue, profit and margin, plus the pipeline of work still open.

The buddy math

You can charge your buddy $15. You’ll just lose $4 doing it.

Two hours of your time cost $16 once overhead is counted, and the paper, the ink, and the sleeve add $3 more, so the favor comes out of your pocket. One job is a nice gesture. Fifty of them is a year of work you cannot explain.

Pricing by gut feel is how good work loses money.

One small job

What you charge: $15.00
2 h of your time: $16.00
Paper, ink & sleeve: $3.00
What the job costs you: $19.00
Net: −$4.00

How it works

Five steps from your overhead to a price you can defend.

Know your burn rate

Enter what your business actually costs — the salary you need, or your expenses and employee costs — plus the hours you have to sell. Priscale turns them into the true hourly cost of running your business.

The Priscale burn rate calculator turning expenses and billable hours into an hourly cost

Scope the job

Build the project from reusable tasks priced by time and materials priced by cost, so the numbers match the work you will really do.

A service scoped from tasks priced by time and materials priced by cost

See your floor

Production Cost is the break-even for this job. Below that line you are paying to work, and now you know exactly where the line sits.

The production cost card marking the break-even floor for a job

Pick your price

The Pricing Spectrum lays out about 30 candidate prices around your floor and the market, each one flagged loss, break-even, or profit, with a recommendation for the situation you are in.

The Priscale pricing spectrum with about 30 color-coded candidate prices anchored on production cost and market value

Send the estimate

Turn the priced project into a PDF estimate headed with your business name and send a secure link your customer approves online. They never need an account.