Rates $$$

[Chris Sparks]

Peddling flat out but not getting anywhere..
Need to work on company rates - advice would be appreciated.

Domestic and commercial solar contractor carrying out fault finding, repairs, maintenance and upgrades. Not a businessman.

How do you bill a job, do you charge call out + hourly rate + travel or use standard rates for different tasks?

What are your rates for common tasks:

Domestic
Fault find solar issue (inverter, communication or supply issue) £?
Fault find solar issue roof array (scaffolding not included) £?
Repair solar issue (inverter / supply issue) £?
Repair solar issue roof (scaffolding not included) £?
Solar service & report inc. IV curve test £?

Commercial solar farm / rooftop
Fault find solar issue (inverter, communication, monitoring or LV issue) £?
Fault find solar issue array (scaffolding not included) £?
Repair solar issue (inverter, communication, monitoring or LV issue) £?
Repair solar issue array (scaffolding not included) £?
Quarterly inspection + report 1MW site (1/4 sample inspection not including thermal survey) £?


Report £?
Materials markup £?
Travel £?

Standard rates:
Domestic day rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Commercial day rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Domestic hourly rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Commercial hourly rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

If you visit multiple sites of different owners for the same client in 1 day, is this commonly charged at individual call-outs or charged at standard day rate?

Any other advice?

Thanks

 

[i=p/u]

What do you need per day to be happy but competitive in your area. ÷ 8

 

[UNG]

Peddling flat out but not getting anywhere..
Need to work on company rates - advice would be appreciated.

Domestic and commercial solar contractor carrying out fault finding, repairs, maintenance and upgrades. Not a businessman.

How do you bill a job, do you charge call out + hourly rate + travel or use standard rates for different tasks?

What are your rates for common tasks:

Domestic
Fault find solar issue (inverter, communication or supply issue) £?
Fault find solar issue roof array (scaffolding not included) £?
Repair solar issue (inverter / supply issue) £?
Repair solar issue roof (scaffolding not included) £?
Solar service & report inc. IV curve test £?

Commercial solar farm / rooftop
Fault find solar issue (inverter, communication, monitoring or LV issue) £?
Fault find solar issue array (scaffolding not included) £?
Repair solar issue (inverter, communication, monitoring or LV issue) £?
Repair solar issue array (scaffolding not included) £?
Quarterly inspection + report 1MW site (1/4 sample inspection not including thermal survey) £?


Report £?
Materials markup £?
Travel £?

Standard rates:
Domestic day rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Commercial day rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Domestic hourly rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

Commercial hourly rate:
Chief £?
Trainee assistant £?
Call out £?

If you visit multiple sites of different owners for the same client in 1 day, is this commonly charged at individual call-outs or charged at standard day rate?

Any other advice?

Thanks

How many rates do you really need, from what you list are you trying to menu price tasks that can have so many variables
Fault find: how long does it take to find a fault, is it an hour or might it get to 4 so do you price it in the middle and win on some and lose on some
Repair fault: so you find the fault and go and get some bits you have on the van to fix it at a different rate
With travel you don't say how far you travel and how long it takes to get to jobs and do you charge that on top of the fault and repair rates

I'm sure there may be some logic in the rates you list rather than run with standard hourly or daily rates with or without a call out charge or out of hours premium on top.

If you are visiting multiple sites for the same client in one day then you could charge a day rate plus mileage or treat it as individual jobs if they are a regular client and you want to keep them then the day rate is probably the better option

Every business is different and only you know your business and it's overheads and are best placed to set your charging rates

 

[Chris Sparks]

I work a large radius so sites maybe a 2h drive each way.

The menu is useful for standard tasks like carrying out inspections to make pricing easier.

My standard day rate:
Chief £250 - £450 (reports, prep etc carried out during evening included)
Trainee £150 (paid £70)
Travel £0.50 mile
Markup 15%
With these rates I'm working flat-out and my expenses are eating up the majority of the income.

We carry the majority of spares for most repairs.


------------
Example day:
Yesterday myself & trainee covered 220 miles

Resolved a monitoring issue on a solar farm where the farm appeared offline. Also fault found Riso issue whilst there. Requires revisit.

Fault found 3 issues on another farm, repaired 2, 1 requires revisit.

Full days work.

Still have 2 reports to create which will take around 2h.
--------------

Bill to client £500
Trainee takes £70
Fuel £42

£388 for myself & the company.


Unfortunately I'm unable to find any guidance on industry rates. What figures are the mid to upper-end rates for a small company? I know what I would like, but what is a fair rate.

 

[snowhead]

If you aren't making enough money then just put all your rates up,, say 15%.

If (potential) customers comment, quote Covid, World Economy general increases in materials etc.
If no-one comments, you haven't put the rate up enough.
If you loose some customers, you're probably better off with the expenses saved.

 

[i=p/u]

Your choosing to.drive 220 miles that must be 3- 4hrs wasted in a day..

 

[Dustydazzler]

In business if you are too busy then you are TOO CHEAP

 

[UNG]

I work a large radius so sites maybe a 2h drive each way.

The menu is useful for standard tasks like carrying out inspections to make pricing easier.

With the large area you cover I don't see how your menu pricing will work are you going to charge the same for a job 5 miles away as one that is 100 miles away
While I can understand you wanting some sort of fixed menu pricing is this to make things easier for you or are you looking to advertise these rates upfront to potential customers
If it is for working out what to charge the customer a simple spreadsheet could be set up with the rates you are charging and all you do is put in the variable numbers of hours, mileage etc and the final cost is calculated

My standard day rate:
Chief £250 - £450 (reports, prep etc carried out during evening included)
Trainee £150 (paid £70)
Travel £0.50 mile
Markup 15%
With these rates I'm working flat-out and my expenses are eating up the majority of the income.

We carry the majority of spares for most repairs.

I assume these rates are based on your actual overheads and how much you want / need to earn and not just a wet finger in the air

Example day:
Yesterday myself & trainee covered 220 miles

Resolved a monitoring issue on a solar farm where the farm appeared offline. Also fault found Riso issue whilst there. Requires revisit.

Fault found 3 issues on another farm, repaired 2, 1 requires revisit.

Full days work.

Still have 2 reports to create which will take around 2h.

I assume a full days work is 8 hours but does that include all the travelling add in the extra couple of hours for the reports and a day rate of £250 means you were working for £25 / hr

Bill to client £500
Trainee takes £70
Fuel £42

£388 for myself & the company.

Unfortunately I'm unable to find any guidance on industry rates. What figures are the mid to upper-end rates for a small company? I know what I would like, but what is a fair rate.

Did the £500 include any materials?
What rate you charge is dependent on your business overheads are and what you need to earn to make it worth you going out to work, you may find industry wage rates published but every business is structured differently with different overheads and blindly following what another company charges could make you a fortune or more likely leave you out of pocket and going bust
There is no magic way of deciding what rate to charge other than sitting down and crunching the numbers it can be difficult if you are just starting out but if you have a year or two of accounts you have a reference of what the expenses of the business incurred in recent years, then going forward for the next year you can add a bit on for inflation and any new expenses the business may incur, don't forget to build in the costs for any less frequent expenses like training courses, regs books and other publications and vehicles that the business needs, when you get to the final figure divide that by the number of days you are likely to work probably 200 - 220 days then you will know how much you need to earn everyday just to meet your business costs

Unfortunately there is no easy way to do it but once you work out the numbers the first time if you keep the calculation format the subsequent years are easier to calculate especially if you set up a spreadsheet

 

[Chris Sparks]

Re: My standard day rate - these do follow some basic rules but I think a wet finger in the air is not far off.

Yesterday example day was 8h inc. driving but not including the 2h writing reports.

Materials required were less than £10.00

Some good advice thx.
I'll create a spreadsheet ASAP.

 

[UNG]

Re: My standard day rate - these do follow some basic rules but I think a wet finger in the air is not far off.

I think starting up most of us have done it that way to try and build a customer base without seeing and including some of the "hidden" business costs

Yesterday example day was 8h inc. driving but not including the 2h writing reports.

Materials required were less than £10.00

Given that you started out looking at a schedule of rates I think you need to look at how you are working, an 8h day where you covered 220 miles would suggest less than 4 hours chargeable on site time if you work on charging an hourly rate how would you cost / bill the travelling hours.
It is all too easy to write off the less than £10 of materials but after 100 jobs you have a tidy sum that you haven't charged

Some good advice thx.
I'll create a spreadsheet ASAP.

The operation of your business seems to have a lot of variables that need to be considered, something me and my old business partner used to do with some jobs that involved travelling and out of town work was every 3 - 4 months was select a few jobs and look at the price we quoted / billed and the actual cost of doing the work and ultimately assess the profit made on a job, if you have a few days work in a particular area it may be more beneficial to work a 10 hour day and stay out than travel back everyday as we found out more than 90 - 120 minutes travelling on a job lasting a couple of days was the break point we worked to back in 2003/4 I stay closer to home now so not looked at it since then

It would be interesting to know what conclusions you come to having done the spreadsheet and I forgot in my previous post you need to add some profit to allow you to reinvest in the business when new tooling / equipment is needed

 

[i=p/u]

Artisan electrics clearly states hes 80+vat in cambridge for doing I'd say mostly domestic, and explains reasons why..
8 x 96 = guts of 800 a day

 

[Dustydazzler]

Artisan electrics clearly states hes 80+vat in cambridge for doing I'd say mostly domestic, and explains reasons why..
8 x 96 = guts of 800 a day

My old company that I used to work for in South London currently charge £145 ph + vat for domestic and £180 ph + vat for all non domestic work.

(all staff are card in employed and vans and tools all provided by the company)

 

[Chris Sparks]

Lots of good advice

I'll have a think about the possibility of using a combination of menu system and hourly rate billing.

I charge clients an overnight expenses fee of £100 per person, once the travel expenses @ £0.50 mile gets near the total on multi-day projects we tend to take a tent to save the miles.

One problem with the hourly rate billing is that a proportion of my jobs take less than a day but they maybe over an hour away so there's no possibility of combining jobs to fill the day. Sometimes I may need to travel 2h each way just to switch something off & on again. I'm not looking forward to designing a billing system to take all this into account but it needs to happen.

Another thing I struggle with is billing in my helper, sometime's he's clearly needed to help with a job so I can bill the client accordingly, but other's I end up making a loss. I suppose there's no answer to that one.

Lot's to think about.

I also need to decide what I would like to be paid, the past 3-4 years every penny has gone back into the company, at least now the outgoings are leveling off.

 

[i=p/u]

Exactly dustydazler, I'm sure costs soon add up, Van's, tools , holiday pay, sick pay, pension contributions. A load of cost you could have .

 

[i=p/u]

Half day, full day rate. Is an option too.

 

[Chris Sparks]

Just watched the YouTube vid from Artisan electrician - along the lines of the advice on this thread. Useful stuff.

He also points out what I'm struggling with, which is knowing what you can charge. Would be useful to know what other experienced solar contractors are charging to work on commercial solar installations / farms? Send me a PM if you don't want it public

 

[Chris Sparks]

Worked out my operational costs attached
Calculations based on 7h per day, 200 days per year with £50'000 salary (which includes sick days, pension + holiday).

Rates calculated:
£385 day rate for solo work
£458 day rate with trainee
Travel @ £0.50 mile
Materials markup %20

Seems a little cheap but it's a good starting point.