i work in london and i know that a decorator charges £ 150 per day and the market rate for a plasterer is £ 250!
so.... for me anything less than double the price of a decorator is ridiculos! and it should definately be a lor more than a plasterer. So i charge £300 - 400. If those pipe monkeys can charge £ 60 p/h + then we should in theory be costing more but its whatever the market will pay and the value of your service
£15 p/h ??? a labourer costs £ 10 p/h
Yes truth I agree. It's what the market will pay and depends on geographic areas. In London you can charge more. I can charge more in different parts of Manchester to. I priced a shower install in Wigan and was told 'oh that's expensive' and I did not get the job. I priced a similar job in Bolton, exact same price, oh that's ok, when can you start'. But yes like I said in a previous post one can get more money for removing rubbish!! It's amazing. I'm trying to increase prices to what we are worth but there are to many out there under cutting each other and so many unregistered electricians doing cash jobs who are competing directly with legit companies that we are running down the industry prices and some sparks or should I say 'monkeys' are working for peanuts. What can we do?
i think the other thing with our line of work is that other than fixing power failures, our work is mostly 'cosmetic' or non essential work....and if something works...then its deemed to be safe which is often not the case. Where as plumbers / heating engineers work while often technical is always essential work such as loss of heating / hot water or leaks. and if a plumber says i need to do such and such....very few argue and just open there wallets. Where as we say you need a new consumer unit for reasons of safety...and they say...'well its been fine years so lets leave it for now' or ' thats expensive..is it really neccasary? ' but atleast we dont deal with human excrement on a daily basis
I was working in a house that was being refurbed and the plumbers removed their waste pipe and left it in a pile in one room. Now I knew that this is where they thought it was going to stay so I contacted the chap who was paying me at the time and politely informed him that there was no way on this planet that I was going to touch it.but at least we don't deal with human excrement on a daily basis
£15 an hour, you may as well work for someone else and save yourself the hassle of all the other work you need to do to run a business. If you work for yourself you need to factor in that you do not get paid, as you would if you worked for someone else, for bank holidays, 8 of approx, annual leave, plus the other time you need to put in such as your free quotes, visits to accountant, time when being audited for Part P, HMRC audits, van servicing, repairs etc on top of all the other overheads that have been mentioned, insurance, advertising cost software licences, etc. I charge £35-£40 per hour for domestic, £45-£50 for commercial and from £60 upwards for industrial, max so far I have charged is £120 per hour working in dusty environment at heights. If I can give you some sound advice that is if you are self employed you are a Business man first, electrician second!! If you are a brilliant sparky but a crap businessman your business will fail! Do you sums for a full 12 months and allow for the jobs you don't get paid for or someone going bankrupt as has happened to me.
As a rule of thumb to get your cost right, if you quote and you get every job you quote on, your to cheap!!
Look at getting approx 60% of the jobs you quote on. If you are still getting 85% upwards, put your cost up.
Its better to do less work for more money. If I charged 50% more than a competitor but only get 50% of the work I quote on for similar work, we both end up with same pay but my competitor has to do twice as much work, including paper work, running around to suppliers etc for the same amount of pay and I can have more time off. Some think it's a competition if they 'win' the job but it's all about getting more pay for the work that you do, do!
Charge what you think you are worth but many electricians do not charge enough because we are fighting with each other for business and with those doing jobs on the side. We should charge like solicitors, they will not drop the price but they also know there competitors will not drop either. They work together and have a pricing policy. I am an Electrical Engineer and worked for the electricity board and have managed many high cost projects. I now have my own electrical contracting business. All sparks should put there cost up. Do you know you can get paid more for removing rubbish!! I mean that, these online sites for work people will pay £400 to have rubbish removed from there garden and it takes about 2-3 hours for £400!! Employ a couple of numpties so you don't get your hands dirty. I sometime wonder if its worth being a spark at all but certainly not for £15/h!! No disrespect but its business novices like yourself who are driving prices down.
No, I went straight on flat rate from the beginning (they even give a 1% discount on what you have to pay them for the first year). As long as you spend more than 10% of your turnover on materials then you get the good rate of 8.5% (or 7.5% for the first year). No need to offset anything, you just pay them 7.5% of your total turnover (including VAT) each quarter, leaving you with an extra 7.5% (roughly) in your pocket at the same time.
You can still get the VAT back on capital goods too (anything over £1k) so a flash new PC or van can go VAT free
HM Revenue & Customs: Flat Rate Scheme for VAT
Cornburn, this sounds interesting. Do you mind saying what you turnover & what you save.
Cheers.