Why Most Trades Underprice Their Work

Most trade businesses do not lose money because they charge too little for the work. They lose money because they are only pricing part of the work. That is the bit most people miss. You look at a job and think: "That is about a day." Or: "That is 8 hours." And the actual installation might genuinely take 8 hours. But the job did not only take 8 hours from the business. Because before the work started, there may have been a site visit. Measuring. Quoting. Ordering materials. Collecting materials. Loading the van. Then on the day, there is travel. Parking. Access. Customer questions. Setting up. Packing away. Then after the work, there is paperwork. Invoicing. And sometimes chasing payment. So what looked like an 8-hour job may have taken the business 12 to 15 hours. The labour was real. The cost was real. But it never made it into the quote properly. That is what I call the Invisible Labour Gap. And once you see it, you start seeing it everywhere. If you have ever had a busy week… sent plenty of quotes… completed the work… got the invoices out… and still thought: "Where did the profit actually go?" This video is for you. It does not matter whether you quote from memory, spreadsheets, an app, or proper software. The same problem can still happen. Because the issue is not always the tool. The issue is what you are actually measuring. Let's use a simple example. Say you are an electrician pricing a small lighting job. You look at the fittings. You think about the install. You allow time for the lights. The switches. The connectors. And maybe some testing. That is the visible work. But before that job starts, you may have already visited the site. Checked the ceiling type. Worked out access. Priced materials. Spoken to the customer. Built the quote. And ordered what you need. Then on the day, you still have loading. Travel. Parking. Setting up. Moving around the building. Cleaning up. Testing. And packing away. And after that, you still have the invoice. So the lights might take 5 hours to fit. But the job did not only take 5 hours from the business. That difference is where margin disappears. Now take a plumbing example. You are replacing a radiator valve. The valve itself might not take long. You know the work. You have done it plenty of times. But what happens if parking is difficult? What happens if the customer has not cleared the area? What happens if the system takes longer to drain? What happens if you have to collect a part? The valve did not change. The job around the valve changed. That is why pricing only from memory becomes dangerous. Because memory usually remembers the task. It often forgets everything around the task. And this is why so many trade businesses think they have a labour rate problem. They say: "Maybe I need to charge more per hour." Sometimes that is true. But a lot of the time, the problem is simpler than that. The hourly rate was only applied to the labour you remembered. Not the labour you actually spent. That is the diagnosis. Most trades are not underpricing because they are bad at the trade. They are underpricing because some of the labour is invisible. Site visits are invisible. Quoting time is invisible. Material collection is invisible. Loading the van is invisible. Walking across a large site is invisible. Waiting for access is invisible. Customer discussions are invisible. Paperwork is invisible. But invisible does not mean free. Someone pays for it. And if it is not in the quote, the business pays for it. That is the Invisible Labour Gap. So the better question is not: "How long will the work take?" The better question is: "What labour does this job create?" That is a very different question. Because once you ask that, you stop only looking at the installation. You start looking at the full job. Before. During. And after. Let's use a builder example. You are fitting internal doors. If you only think about the door going into the frame, you might allow the fitting time. But the job may also include collecting the doors. Moving them into the property. Trimming. Adjusting. Dealing with old frames. Protecting floors. Clearing waste. Speaking to the customer. And making sure the finish is right. The door fit time matters. But it is not the full labour allowance. Same with landscaping. You might be installing fence panels. One fence panel may have a fairly repeatable fit time. But a straight run with easy access is not the same as a rear garden with no side access. Heavy materials. Awkward ground. And a long carry from the van. The panel did not change. The site did. If you price both jobs the same, one of them will probably hurt your margin. Same with HVAC. Installing an air conditioning unit in an open commercial space is one thing. Installing it in a live building is different. Restricted access. Customers walking around. Working hours to follow. Extra paperwork. The unit might be the same. The site rarely is. This is why you need to separate two things. Productive installation time. And the conditions around the installation. If you mix those together, your pricing becomes messy. You start changing the labour every time a job feels awkward. Add a bit here. Take a bit off there. Copy an old quote. Guess another one. And eventually, you do not really know what your price is based on. A better way is to build your labour from fit times. A fit time is the productive installation time for one item or activity. Not the full job. Not the travel. Not the paperwork. Not the customer chat. Just the task itself. For an electrician, that might be a socket outlet. A fused spur. An LED batten. For a plumber, it might be a basin tap. A radiator valve. An isolation valve. For a builder, it might be a door. A section of stud wall. A length of skirting. For a landscaper, it might be a fence panel. A concrete post. A square metre of patio slabs. The point is not that your first number will be perfect. The point is that it gives you a base you can measure. Instead of saying: "That feels like a day." You can say: "These items create this much productive labour." Now you have something to work from. But this is important. Fit time is not the final labour number. Fit time is the base. You still apply an uplift. Always. Because no job happens in perfect conditions. The uplift is what turns productive fit time into a realistic labour allowance. So the pricing flow is simple. Fit times first. Uplift second. Labour rate third. Labour value after that. Here is a simple example. Your catalogue items add up to 8 productive hours. That is the base fit time. Now you apply an uplift depending on the site. A new build or open site might be 10 to 15 percent. A commercial fit-out might be 20 to 25 percent. A school, hospital, or live building might be 25 to 35 percent. An industrial site might be 30 to 40 percent. A difficult access or highly restricted site might be 40 to 50 percent. So if the base is 8 hours… and the job is in an occupied building… you might apply a 35 percent uplift. 8 multiplied by 1.35 gives you 10.8 hours. That is very different from simply saying: "It is an 8-hour job." And this is where people get caught out. They were not necessarily wrong that the installation was 8 hours. They were wrong to treat 8 productive hours as the full job allowance. That is the difference. The fit time measures the work. The uplift measures the world around the work. That is the line. The fit time measures the work. The uplift measures the world around the work. Because every site behaves differently. And this is where pricing from memory starts to break as you grow. When you are working on your own, you can carry a lot in your head. You remember the awkward jobs. You remember the customer who delayed you. You remember the school site that needed extra paperwork. You remember the job where access was a nightmare. But as more quotes come in, that gets harder. More enquiries. More customers. More jobs. More site types. More materials. More pressure to get quotes out quickly. And eventually, someone else may need to help price the work. Now the problem gets bigger. Because if the pricing system only exists in your head, it is hard for anyone else to follow. One person includes the hidden labour. Another forgets it. One person applies the right uplift. Another prices it like an easy site. One person remembers material collection. Another just prices the fitting. That is how similar work produces different results. Not because anyone is careless. But because the pricing process is not structured. This is why completed jobs are so valuable. Every completed job should teach you something. After the job, compare: Estimated hours. Actual hours. Expected margin. Actual margin. Then ask: Was the fit time wrong? Was the uplift too low? Were the site conditions worse than expected? Did we miss material handling? Did we lose time on access? Did we spend more time with the customer than expected? This is how pricing improves. Not by guessing harder. By reviewing better. Let's use a full house rewire example. You complete one rewire and it goes well. You complete another and it feels tight. Then the third one loses money. Without structure, it is hard to know why. You might just think: "We need to charge more for rewires." But that does not tell you enough. With fit times, you can look at the job properly. Socket quantities. Switch quantities. Consumer unit work. Cable routes. Testing. Access. Occupied or empty property. Material handling. Then you can ask: Which part actually failed? Maybe the fit times were fine. Maybe the testing allowance was too low. Maybe occupied properties need a higher uplift. Maybe the problem was not the electrical work itself. Maybe it was the invisible labour around it. That is the benefit of measuring. You are no longer trying to remember the whole job as one big blur. You are finding the part that caused the problem. And once you find it, you can improve the next quote. Now, this is where FieldHive fits. Not because software magically fixes pricing. It does not. You still need to know your costs. You still need to understand your work. You still need trade judgement. But this is exactly why FieldHive is built around reusable pricing items, labour times and connected quoting. The idea is simple. Build the item once. Store the fit time. Store the material information. Use it again in future quotes. Then apply the right uplift for the job conditions. The quote becomes easier to build. The labour becomes easier to understand. And when the job moves forward, the information is not rebuilt from scratch every time. That is the workflow FieldHive is built around. Customer. Quote. Booking. Job. Invoice. The point is not more admin. The point is less guessing. So if you take one thing from this video, take this: The work is not always the problem. The invisible work is. That invisible work could be travel. Access. Quoting. Ordering. Collecting. Loading. Customer discussion. Testing. Paperwork. Invoicing. It all takes time. And time has to be priced somewhere. So the better way to price trade work is: Build the productive time with fit times. Apply an uplift every time. Use your labour rate. Review the completed job. Improve the next quote. That is how you move away from guessing. Now the next problem is this. How do you actually build a pricing system that remembers these items, times and costs… instead of starting from scratch every time you quote similar work? That is exactly what we will cover in the next video: How To Build A Pricing Catalogue For Trade Work.