How to Price Electrical Jobs (Without Leaving Money on the Table)

Pricing is where good electricians quietly lose money. You can do clean, code-compliant work, keep callbacks near zero, and still finish the year wondering where the profit went. Usually the problem is not the work; it is a price built on a gut feel instead of your actual numbers.

This article walks through the common pricing methods, how to figure out what a job really costs you, and how to set prices that leave a real profit. The numbers below are illustrative examples, not benchmarks. Plug in your own.

The three ways electricians price work

Most pricing comes down to three approaches, and plenty of shops blend them.

• **Hourly (time and materials):** simple to quote, but it caps your upside on fast work and invites the customer to watch the clock.
• **Flat-rate (menu pricing):** a fixed price per task, calculated in advance from your costs. The customer knows the number before you start, and you get paid for the value, not just the minutes.
• **Cost-plus:** you total your costs for a specific job and add a fixed markup or margin. The workhorse for larger, custom jobs like panel upgrades and service changes.

Know your true cost before you quote anything

Your cost is not the wire and the breakers. It is everything it takes to put a qualified electrician in front of a customer and keep the doors open. Break it into three buckets.

**Labor burden.** Your tech's wage is only part of what they cost you. Add payroll taxes, workers' comp, liability insurance, paid time off, and benefits. A worker you pay $35/hour might carry a burdened cost closer to $50-$55/hour once everything is loaded. Use the burdened number in your pricing, never the raw wage.

**Materials with markup.** Materials cost you more than the invoice price once you count pickup time, returns, waste, and the cash you float before payment. A markup in the range of 15% to 35% is common, sometimes higher on small parts. **Overhead** (rent, software, tools, marketing, vehicles, permits, and your own quoting time) has to be recovered on every job. Total your annual overhead, divide by billable field hours, and you get an overhead cost per billable hour that fixes a lot of underpricing.

Set a target profit margin (and do not apologize for it)

Profit is not what is left over by accident; it is a line item you decide on up front. Once you know your fully loaded cost, you add margin on top.

Be careful with markup versus margin. If your loaded cost is $1,000 and you want a 20% margin, you do not add 20%. You divide by (1 − 0.20), which gives $1,250. Adding 20% markup only yields $1,200, which is a 16.7% margin. That gap adds up fast across a year of jobs.

A worked example (illustrative)

Say you are quoting a straightforward 240V dryer circuit. These are made-up numbers to show the method, not a rate card.

• Labor: 3 hours at a burdened cost of $52/hour = **$156**
• Materials at cost = $70, plus 25% markup = **$87.50**
• Overhead: 3 billable hours at $30/hour of loaded overhead = **$90**
• Permit and inspection fee = **$60**
• **Total cost = $393.50.** For a 25% margin, divide by 0.75: **$525** flat-rate price.

Why flat-rate usually closes better than hourly

Customers hate open-ended meters. An hourly quote asks them to sign a blank check and hope you work fast. A flat price removes that fear: they see one number, say yes or no, and do not feel penalized if the job runs long. It also rewards you for skill; if you wire that circuit in two hours instead of three, the flat price protects the margin you earned.

Flat-rate does require the homework above. Build a menu of your common tasks from real cost data, review it a couple of times a year, and keep a cost-plus process ready for custom jobs.

Pricing high-ticket work vs. service calls

For **service calls**, protect your minimum. Charge a diagnostic or trip fee, and set a service-call minimum that covers the drive, the truck, and the first stretch of on-site time. Small jobs are where forgotten travel and overhead quietly turn into losses.

For **high-ticket work** like EV chargers, Powerwall or battery installs, and panel upgrades, the price reflects permits, utility coordination, load calculations, warranty exposure, and real liability. These jobs carry more risk and support healthier margins, so build them cost-plus. A $2,000 EV charger install priced as "six hours of labor" is a job you will regret.

Build your lead costs into your price

Getting in front of a customer costs money, whether it is ads, a truck wrap, or a lead service, and that cost has to live inside your pricing like any other overhead. A platform that takes a percentage of your ticket scales with your best jobs, so pricing around it gets complicated. A flat per-job fee is far easier to build in: it is a known, fixed number you drop into your cost stack like a permit fee.

That predictability is the model **Charge Home Solutions** uses for electricians. It books exclusive customer appointments and charges a flat per-job referral fee only after you have been paid, never a percentage, so your pricing stays yours. See how it works at /for-electricians/, and it is worth understanding how much electrician leads cost before you fold that number into your rates.