Pricing guide
How much to charge as a handyman
Most new handymen pick a number by asking around, then quietly discover it doesn’t cover the van, the downtime, or the tax bill. This guide flips the process: work out what an hour of your time must earn, then shape it into hourly rates, call-out minimums, and fixed quotes.
Why the “going rate” misleads you
The bloke two villages over charging £25 an hour might be semi-retired with a paid-off van and no mortgage. Copying his number imports his life into your prices. Local rates tell you the ceiling customers are used to; they say nothing about the floor you personally need to stay solvent. Calculate the floor first, then look at the market.
Build your rate from the bottom up
Only a slice of your week is billable. Quoting, driving between jobs, collecting materials, chasing payments, and the occasional dead afternoon all eat hours nobody pays for directly. A full-time week of 45 hours often contains 25 you can actually charge out. Divide everything you must earn by the billable hours, not the total hours:
| Worked example | Figure |
|---|---|
| Hours on the tools you can realistically bill | 25 hrs / week |
| Target take-home before tax | £700 / week |
| Van, fuel, insurance, phone, software (weekly share) | £150 / week |
| Tool wear, consumables, and replacements | £40 / week |
| Total to recover each week | £890 |
| Minimum viable hourly rate (890 ÷ 25) | ≈ £36 / hour |
Swap in your own overheads and target income. Whatever falls out of the division is your break-even, and your advertised rate should sit above it, not on it.
Hourly, day rate, or fixed price?
Each has a job. Hourly suits diagnostic and open-ended work, where nobody can predict what’s behind the plasterboard. Day rates suit renovation support, where a builder wants you on site all week. Fixed prices suit repeatable tasks you’ve done fifty times, and customers love them because the risk sits with you. Price that risk in: a fixed quote should be your hourly estimate plus a cushion for the surprise that shows up one job in five.
A useful discipline is quoting ranges in writing before you start. It sets expectations, filters out bargain hunters early, and gives you a paper trail if the scope grows mid-job.
Call-out minimums and small jobs
The ten-minute tap washer is never ten minutes. There’s the drive over, the search for parking, the chat, the drive back. Without a minimum charge, small jobs actively lose money. Set a first-hour minimum or a flat call-out fee, state it up front, and let it politely filter the jobs that were never worth the diesel. Bundling helps too: “while I’m there” lists turn a marginal visit into a profitable morning.
Materials: charge for the shopping trip
You spend time selecting materials, you front the cash, and you carry the comeback if a part fails. A 10 to 20 percent markup on materials is normal and fair. Itemise them separately on the invoice so the customer sees labour and parts as distinct things; transparency here prevents the awkward receipt conversation later.
Raising prices without losing customers
Review your rate every year, or immediately after any month you turned work away. Being fully booked for weeks ahead is the market telling you you’re underpriced. Existing regulars get notice and a modest step; new enquiries simply hear the new number. Hardly anyone leaves over a fair increase delivered confidently, and the few who do free up space at the better rate.
Know your numbers as you go
Rate-setting only works if you can see what each job actually earned. ServiceInvoice logs your jobs and turns them into itemised invoices, so the labour-versus-materials split is always on record. Free to start.
Try it on your next jobWhere this fits in the bigger picture
Pricing is one leg of the stool. If you’re still setting up, the full guide to starting a handyman business covers registration and insurance, the bookkeeping guide shows where your rate’s tax slice goes, and how to get handyman customers fills the diary you’ve just priced.