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One thing i`m still having a hard time to do is knowing what price i should give my clients whenever i do a service.

When its small stuff, like troubleshooting a printer, or router, or an app got corrupted and just needs to be reinstalled, i don`t tend to let them pay

But say i have to replace a motherboard. How much would i have to ask for such a service? assembling.

Or i have to pull network cables that go through already build in conduits?

Or doing tune ups?

Or just setting up a small office network?

I always worry i either ask them too much, or too little. And often, its always too little.

I know it might be different in other countries or states or whatever.

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Great question!

The simple answer: you price your work so as to make a reasonable profit and not upset customers. Often a tricky balance.

Regarding a motherboard swap out - I’d advocate charging time and materials - £x/hour plus £Y for the parts. Ask around locally to determine what a representative hourly cost might be for your area.

If you are pulling cables, the same thing applies. But be careful unless you have expertise with pulling cables. You could end up doing damage (drilling at the wrong place, breaking optical cables, etc).

Tuneups you might charge a flat fee - say £25 to cover the basics (updating drivers, patching, scanning, internal clean out, etc). Have a set of things you are going to do and for that flat fee. Such tuneups may be a loss leader to get your customers into the door.

I’ve always believed a workman, as they say, is worth his salt. Do not be afraid to ask for what you believe is a good price. If it’s too high, you will quickly know. If you start to lose money hand over fist, you are charging too low.

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Hmmm, i see

Another issue i almost always deal with is people not willing to pay.

That`s a really big problem over here where i live in South America - Paramaribo.

People have a really bad habit of not wanting to pay you what you asked them to pay. They always want a discount, no matter how much explain the work to them.

Thats why i usually dont wanna do any services for random people, but instead for companies, since they are actually able to pay.

But thank you for the response. I`ll take all you have said under consideration

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You need to do some detective work, perhaps ring around a few companies outside of your workable area and ask for a quote for a job, explain you are getting a couple of quotes to have the work done and will decide who to go with once you have a few. Then use those as baselines for your pricing, however, be aware that you could optionally charge an hourly fee or minimum of a half days price instead of per job, meaning you get done what you can in the hours negotiated, be that a cable pull, a repair or both in the given time frame.

As far as the discount side of things, you could always explain that one off jobs are as priced but regular customers will get X% discount for re-using your services, and apply that discount after an allotted amount of hours, say if you do more than 40 hours for the customer they obtain 5% off or once they have been with your services for 1 year, you offer a discount on all jobs over 5 hours of work…

Its negotiation on both sides, but you need to juggle this to suit. Every business is going to be different.

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For those that don’t pay after the work is done, I would lay out what they want done (estimate) and then ask for a deposit up front before you start the work. That way your guaranteed your payment. Just my opinion.

@yvanwilliams

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In business it is income minus expenses equals profit/loss. Total up how much it costs you to do business: your time, fuel, insurance, taxes, office supplies, etc., etc. Then you need to come up with a rate or pricing schedule to (hopefully) cover that amount. Parts and material typically are paid for by the customer in addition to other charges.

Find an accountant you trust to help you work through it. They should be able to help you set up a basic business plan.

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My suggestion is you need to price what your time is worth. (sign in your shop)

$ YY Diagnostic Fee

$ XXX Shop Labor Rate / hr.

$ ZZZ Contract Rate / hr. (Based on minimum number of hours)

One thing i`m still having a hard time to do is knowing what price i should give my clients whenever i do a service.

Please refer to diagnostic fee and shop rate above. Thats what you charge. If someone’s computer is down, it’s not “simple stuff”, otherwise customer would have fixed it. You want to be in business to help other people. That is done by charging for your time and knowledge.

When its small stuff, like troubleshooting a printer, or router, or an app got corrupted and just needs to be reinstalled, i don`t tend to let them pay

Need to change this policy first. Working for free is quickest way to go out of business.

I would setup “Diagnostic Fee”, say 1-hour of labor. This would be charged everytime you look at something for customer and total amount is applied to invoice for the job. On “small stuff”, you get fee and fix it. If you feel diagnositic fee is appropriate charge, just let customer know it was simple fix and diagnostic fee covered it.

As for the rest of the senarios, same answer. Diagnostic fee plus additional hours needed plus parts.

As for parts needed, this is always charged cost of part plus markup

One of the things you are going to find out, is some jobs are not worth doing. It’s not worth your time and the customer is not willing to pay for the time you would have to put in. For example, you are going to get older computer that needs motherboard. You are going to have to explain to client that it is not worth fixing. Why put 300 into old computer with no warranty when you can buy brand new one for 400 with warranty. Suggest client put money into new computer and charge for data transfer.

Hope that helps.

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This!

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