For contractors
How to price a contracting job before you commit to it.
You walk the job, you do the math in your head on the drive back, and you send a number that feels about right. Three months later the change orders, the second dump run, and the week the crew sat idle have quietly eaten the whole margin, and there is no way to point at where it went.
Priscale puts the profit or loss on the screen while the bid is still yours to change.
Kitchen remodel · bid on instinct
- The bid you had in mind
- $5,800.00
- What the job costs you
- $5,980.00
- Where that leaves you
- −$180.00
Found out in month three, or found out on Tuesday.
Profit per bid
Know the profit or loss on a bid before you commit to it.
A contracting bid is a promise about work that has not happened yet, and once it is signed the number stops moving. Priscale prices the job first: crew hours at the rate your business actually has to earn, materials at what you pay for them, and permits and dump runs charged as their own fee lines on the estimate instead of absorbed. Crew time and materials are your floor, and any bid under it is a job you pay to do.
From there you get about 30 candidate prices running from well under your floor up past what this kind of remodel goes for locally, each one flagged loss, break-even, or profit, with a recommended band highlighted for the situation you are bidding into. Slow winter, a general contractor you want to keep, a homeowner who has already collected three quotes: the recommendation moves, the arithmetic underneath it does not.
How the pricing spectrum worksThe same remodel, priced
- Crew · 76 h @ $52.00/h
- $3,952.00
- Materials
- $1,640.00
- Your floor
- $5,592.00
- Permits & fees
- $388.00
- Recommended bid
- $6,900.00
Transparent estimates
A line-item estimate ends the haggle before it starts.
“Why does this cost that much?” is a question about trust, not arithmetic, and a lump-sum bid invites it every time. Priscale writes the estimate out the way you built it: the crew hours, the materials, the permits, with your profit already inside the price instead of tacked on at the bottom where it looks negotiable.
Send it as a secure link, name the person whose approval actually counts, and see when it was opened. When the homeowner comes back asking to trim the job, you trim a line and watch the total move, instead of guessing at a discount and hoping it still clears your floor.
More on estimates and approvalsKitchen remodel · itemized
- Crew · 76 h @ $52.00/h
- $3,952.00
- Materials
- $1,640.00
- Permits & fees
- $388.00
- Profit, spread across the lines
- $920.00
- Estimate total
- $6,900.00
Market value & competitors
How low you can go on a bid and still make money.
Losing a bid to somebody cheaper only stings when you cannot tell whether they knew something you did not. Log the prices you hear quoted and the ones homeowners actually approved, and adopt one of them as the market value for this kind of remodel. Your floor and that ceiling on one screen is the whole negotiating range, written down before the conversation starts.
The competitor map pins the outfits you bid against where they really work, so “the market” means your side of town rather than a national average. When the next call comes in at $6,200.00, you already know whether that is a job worth taking or a job worth passing on.
Market prices and the competitor map are on the Freelancer and Business plans.
More on market value and the mapWhat this remodel goes for
- Highest price heard
- $8,400.00
- Highest approved
- $7,600.00
- Your floor
- $5,592.00
- Room to move
- $2,008.00
Other trades
Not just contractors.
Landscapers, artists, software developers, and anyone else who names a price before the work starts run into the same arithmetic from a different direction.