How to price a job and mark up materials

Every job price has three parts. Labour is your time on the tools, at a rate that covers your real costs, not just what lands in your pocket. Materials are what you buy in to do the job. Margin is the bit on top that keeps the business running and pays you for the risk of taking the job on.

Add labour and materials and you have your cost. That is not your price. Your price is your cost plus a margin. Miss that last step and you are working hard just to break even, which is how a lot of busy tradies end up with nothing in the bank at the end of a big month.

Marking up materials means charging the customer more than you paid at the supplier. This is standard practice across every trade, and it is not gouging. When you supply materials you are doing real work for that money: driving to the supplier, picking and checking the order, storing it, carrying the cost until the customer pays, and standing behind it if something is faulty.

There is a warranty angle too. When you supply the part, you own the problem if it fails, not the customer. That is worth something. A fair markup covers the pickup, the handling, the cash you have tied up, and the fact that you carry the risk if it goes wrong.

As a rough guide, many trades mark materials up somewhere between 10% and 30%, and smaller fiddly items often carry more than big-ticket ones. A box of fittings you had to chase around three suppliers reasonably earns a higher markup than a single large unit you ordered once. There is no fixed rule. It comes down to the effort and cost of supplying that item.

Be clear on the difference between markup and margin, because they are not the same number. Markup is added to your cost. Margin is the slice of the final price that is profit. A 25% markup is not a 25% margin. Our markup and margin calculator sorts this out for you so you charge what you meant to, not less.

Start from what the job actually costs you: your hours at a rate that covers tools, vehicle, insurance, super and downtime, plus materials with a fair markup. Then add your margin on top. If a job feels tight, it usually means the labour rate is too low or the margin got squeezed out to win the work, and neither is a habit worth keeping.

Watch the jobs that eat time you never billed: the quoting, the supplier runs, the callbacks. Price with a little headroom so those hours are covered. It is far better to price fairly and land slightly fewer jobs than to win everything and go backwards on each one.

The tradies who price well are the ones who do not start from scratch every time. Keep a saved price list of the materials and jobs you do most, each with the markup you have already decided on, so a quote is a few taps instead of a guessing game. Consistent pricing also stops you from lowballing a job just because you were tired or rushed on the day.

ONARA Ops does this for you. Save your common materials and labour with your markup remembered per item, and it builds the quote with your margin already in. You see your cost and your margin, the customer sees a clean price on your brand. When they say yes, the quote rolls straight into an invoice with a pay-now card button, money to your account with no cut taken.