How To Stop Underquoting Labour On Trade Jobs

In the last videos, we looked at two big problems. First, why profit disappears on trade jobs. Then, how a pricing catalogue stops you rebuilding quotes from scratch. But there is still one part that catches trade businesses out more than almost anything else. Labour. Because most trades do not underquote labour on purpose. They underquote labour because they only price the bit they can see. The install. The fitting. The work on the tools. But that is not the full labour cost. A job does not start when you pick up the drill. And it does not finish when the last screw goes in. There is labour before the work. Labour during the work. And labour after the work. That full journey is what I call the Labour Chain. And if you only price the middle part of that chain, the job can look fine when you quote it… but still feel tight when it is finished. So in this video, we are going to look at how to stop underquoting labour on trade jobs. Not by guessing higher. Not by just adding a bit on. But by understanding what labour the job actually creates. If you quote from memory, spreadsheets, old quotes, or even basic software, this applies to you. Because the problem is not always your hourly rate. A lot of the time, the problem is that the labour never made it into the quote in the first place. Let's use a simple example. You look at a job and think: "That is about a day." So you allow 8 hours. And the actual installation might genuinely take 8 hours. An electrician changing a consumer unit. A plumber fitting a basin and tap. A builder hanging internal doors. A landscaper replacing fence panels. An HVAC engineer fitting an air conditioning unit. The actual fitting work might genuinely be around a day. That is not where the mistake always happens. The mistake happens when the day on the tools gets treated as the whole labour cost. Because before the job happens, time has usually already been spent. The enquiry came in. You spoke to the customer. You asked questions. You arranged a visit. You drove to site. You measured up. You checked what was already there. You worked out materials. You built the quote. Maybe the customer asked for a change. You revised the quote. Then you ordered materials. Collected materials. Loaded the van. That is all labour. It might not feel like labour because you are not installing anything. But the business is still spending time. Then the job starts. You drive to site. You park. You unload. You walk materials to the work area. You speak to the customer. You wait for access. You work around other trades. You move things out of the way. You answer questions. Again, that is labour. Then the install finishes. But the job may still not be finished. There is testing. Photos. Tidying. Snagging. Paperwork. Invoice creation. Follow-up questions. And sometimes chasing payment. So when someone says: "It is an 8-hour job." The better question is: "Which 8 hours?" The 8 hours on the tools? Or the full Labour Chain that the business has to carry? Because those are not the same thing. And this is where a lot of trade businesses get caught. They price the installation. But they absorb the rest. Let's make it more real. An electrician might quote a consumer unit change as one day. But the full job might include the initial call. Checking the existing board. Confirming bonding. Checking access. Building the quote. Ordering parts. Loading the van. Carrying out the change. Testing. Certification. Labelling. Customer questions. And sending the invoice. The board change is only part of the Labour Chain. A plumber might price a bathroom job based on the days on site. But around that, there is measuring. Checking pipe routes. Confirming sanitaryware. Speaking to suppliers. Collecting parts. Dealing with customer changes. Return visits. And snagging. The bathroom install is only part of the Labour Chain. A builder might price hanging internal doors. But there is measuring. Collecting doors. Collecting ironmongery. Loading. Protecting the area. Planing. Adjusting. Cleaning up. Taking waste away. And sometimes returning if something needs tweaking. The hanging is only part of the Labour Chain. A landscaper might price a fence replacement by panel and post. But access can change everything. Old posts may not come out cleanly. Materials may need carrying a long way. Ground conditions may slow the job down. Waste may need shifting. The panel fit time is only part of the Labour Chain. And HVAC is the same. You may know the normal time to fit an indoor unit. An outdoor unit. Brackets. Pipework. And an isolator. But there is still access. Lifting. Drilling routes. Cable runs. Drain routes. Commissioning. Customer explanation. And paperwork. The unit install is only part of the Labour Chain. So the first rule is this: Do not only ask how long the install takes. Ask what labour the job creates. That one question changes how you quote. Because now you are not just thinking about the visible work. You are thinking about the full job. Before. During. After. Now, this becomes more of a problem as the business grows. At the start, the owner usually carries all of this in their head. You quote it. You do it. You order it. You invoice it. You remember the awkward bits. You remember the customer. You remember that access was poor. You remember that the supplier was slow. It is not perfect. But because it is all in your head, it works well enough. Then the workload grows. More enquiries. More quotes. More jobs. More customers. More invoices. More things to remember. And suddenly, the Labour Chain gets longer. Not because one job has changed. But because there are more jobs moving at once. Every quote needs thinking about. Every customer needs replying to. Every job needs planning. Every material order needs checking. Every invoice needs sending. Every payment needs watching. That is why a business can get busier and feel less in control. The installation work has grown. But the labour around the work has grown as well. And if the quotes were never allowing for that properly, the extra workload just exposes the problem. This is also why pricing from memory becomes risky. Most trades start by quoting from experience. That is normal. You do a type of job enough times, and you get a feel for it. You know what looks like half a day. You know what looks like a day. You know what looks like two people for a week. That experience matters. But memory has one big weakness. It is hard to review. When a job loses money, what exactly went wrong? Was the install time wrong? Was the access worse than expected? Was the travel missed? Was the material collection missed? Was the customer more demanding than expected? Was testing longer than allowed? Was paperwork ignored? Was the job copied from an old quote that looked similar… but was not actually the same? If the quote was built from memory, it is hard to know. So the next quote becomes another judgement call. Maybe a better judgement call. But still a judgement call. That is why labour needs structure. Not complicated structure. Just enough structure so you can see what you priced. This is where fit times come in. A fit time is the productive installation time for a specific item or task. Nothing else. Not travel. Not admin. Not loading the van. Not customer conversations. Not site access. Just the normal time to fit the thing. For an electrician, that might be a 2-gang socket outlet. A switched fused spur. An LED batten. For a plumber, that might be a basin mixer tap. A radiator valve. A waste fitting. An isolation valve. For a builder, that might be an internal door. A section of stud wall. Skirting. Or making good. For a landscaper, it might be a fence panel. A concrete post. A gravel board. Edging. Or slabs. For HVAC, it might be brackets. Indoor units. Pipe runs. Isolators. Drain pumps. Or commissioning tasks. The point is not perfection. The point is repeatability. Because if you have a saved fit time, you can improve it. If you only have memory, there is nothing solid to improve. But this part matters. Fit time is not the final labour allowance. Fit time is the base. It measures the task. But the site still changes the job. That is why you keep fit times separate from site conditions. A socket outlet does not become a different item because it is in an occupied building. A basin tap does not become a different task because parking is poor. A fence panel does not become a different product because access is awkward. The task is the task. The site changes the labour around the task. So instead of changing the fit time every time, you apply an uplift. The uplift allows for the conditions around the work. Access. Parking. Walking distance. Customer interruptions. Site inductions. Permits. Restricted areas. Working around other people. Material handling. Extra protection. That is why the rule is: Fit time measures the task. Uplift measures the site. For example, let's say the job has 8 productive hours. That is the base from your fit times. But the job is in an occupied building. People are working around you. Access is not perfect. You cannot just spread materials everywhere. You are stopping and starting. So you apply a 35 percent uplift. 8 times 1.35 gives you 10.8 hours. The install did not change. The site changed the labour allowance. That is a big difference. Because if you quoted 8 hours, but the job really needed 10.8 hours because of the conditions… the missing 2.8 hours comes straight out of the margin. And that is before you even think about the wider business time around the job. This is why just saying: "I charge £65 an hour" does not solve everything. Your rate matters. But your rate only works if it is applied to enough hours. If you miss the hours, the rate cannot save the job. Now, this gets even more important when someone else starts helping with quotes. When everything is in the owner's head, the owner makes the judgement. But as the business grows, maybe a project manager helps. Maybe an office person helps. Maybe another estimator helps. Maybe a supervisor gives input. And now labour pricing can become inconsistent. One person allows for travel. Another misses it. One person knows an occupied site needs uplift. Another prices it like a clean open site. One person remembers that a task always overruns. Another uses the basic time. So two people can quote the same job differently. Not because one is careless. But because the pricing knowledge lives in people's heads. A fit-time system makes that knowledge easier to share. The business starts to build: Standard catalogue items. Standard fit times. Standard labour rules. Standard uplift ranges. Standard review habits. That does not remove judgement. It gives judgement a better starting point. Instead of asking someone to guess labour from scratch, you give them a process to follow. That is what makes labour easier to delegate. And it is what makes pricing more consistent as the business grows. The next step is reviewing completed jobs. Because no pricing system is right forever. After a job is finished, look back and ask: What did we estimate? What actually happened? Did the fit time hold up? Was the uplift too low? Was access worse than expected? Did we miss material collection? Did we forget testing? Did admin take longer than expected? If a task keeps overrunning, change the fit time. If a site type keeps eating margin, change the uplift. If a certain kind of job always needs more planning, allow for it. That is how labour pricing improves. Not by guessing harder. By seeing where the quote failed. There are a few mistakes to avoid. Mistake one: Only pricing the installation. That is the most common one. Mistake two: Treating every job like a clean, simple site. Most jobs are not clean, simple sites. Mistake three: Mixing site conditions into fit times. Keep the task and the site separate. Mistake four: Never comparing estimated hours against actual hours. Without feedback, nothing improves. Mistake five: Assuming the labour rate is always the issue. Sometimes it is. But often, the missing labour was never priced. This is where FieldHive fits naturally. Not as a magic pricing tool. Not as something that replaces trade judgement. And not as software that decides your margins for you. FieldHive is built around the idea that your pricing should become easier to repeat and improve over time. You can build reusable catalogue items with labour times, material information and pricing data. So when you quote, you are not starting from memory every time. The quote can be built from items that already carry the labour thinking behind them. Then that quote can move forward into the booking, the job and the invoice without rebuilding the same information again. That is the wider point. The better your labour structure is, the easier it becomes to keep the job connected. Customer. Quote. Booking. Job. Invoice. Payment. The aim is not to make quoting more complicated. The aim is to stop labour disappearing in the gaps. So if you remember one thing from this video, remember this: You are not pricing the install. You are pricing the full Labour Chain around the job. The install is the visible part. But the labour before, during and after the install is usually where margin gets squeezed. So start separating it. Fit time for the task. Uplift for the site. Review for the truth. That gives you a pricing system that can actually improve. Now the next question is this. How do you know what uplift to apply? Because a clean open site is not the same as a commercial fit-out. An occupied building is not the same as an industrial site. And restricted access can completely change the labour allowance. That is exactly what we will cover in the next video: How To Price Labour For Different Site Types.