HVAC Flat Rate Pricing: How to Build Your Price Book
A flat price is three things added together: the hours the task really takes at your own hourly rate, the parts at your markup, and a reserve for the jobs that come back. The third one is what makes flat rate different from hourly. On hourly, a callback is billable. On flat rate, it comes out of the price you already quoted.
The formula
- Labor = task hours x your hourly rate. The rate comes from your own costs, worked out on the labor rate calculator.
- Parts = cost x (1 + markup %). Markup, not margin, and they are not the same number: markup vs margin.
- Callback reserve = a percentage of labor plus parts, not of parts alone.
- Flat price = the three added together.
That is the whole method. The hard part is not the arithmetic, it is the hours, and the only way to get those is to time the tasks you already do.
Price one task
The starting values are placeholders so the boxes are not empty. They are not recommendations and they are not anyone's real numbers. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What is in the price, task by task
This table has no prices in it, and that is the point. What it has is the shape of each task: where the time actually goes, and the one thing that catches people out when they convert that task to a flat price.
| Task | Where the time goes | What catches people out |
|---|---|---|
| Capacitor replacement | Mostly the trip | The part is cheap and the visit is not. Price it off the part and you donate the drive. |
| Contactor replacement | Mostly the trip | If you find both this and a capacitor, the second part should not carry a second trip charge. |
| Condensate drain clear | Wildly variable | The one job a flat price can lose badly on. Cap the included time and price beyond it separately. |
| Blower motor replacement | Long, and longer on some cabinets | Often a warranty part. Free from the manufacturer, never free from you, so price the labor on its own. |
| Igniter or flame sensor | Short once diagnosed | Usually sold alongside a cleaning. Decide in advance whether the second task is discounted. |
| Refrigerant leak search | Open ended by nature | Price the search separately from the repair, and say up front what happens if the leak is not found. |
| Seasonal maintenance visit | Predictable | The easiest first conversion. You schedule it, so drive time per visit is low and known. |
| After hours diagnostic | Same work, worse hour | A separate flat price, not a percentage bolted on. He has to be able to say yes on the phone. |
Three ways a price book goes wrong
Timing the job you remember instead of the job you do
Everyone remembers the capacitor swap that took eleven minutes. Nobody remembers the one where the disconnect was seized and the panel was behind a shed. Time ten of them and use something near the middle, because the flat price has to survive the bad ones as well as the good ones.
Forgetting that the trip is most of the small jobs
On a task where the part costs almost nothing and the work takes minutes, nearly the entire price is showing up. Price that job off the part and you have just donated the drive. This is why the small tasks look expensive as a percentage and are not expensive at all in absolute terms.
Copying somebody else's book
A price book carries the wage, the insurance, the fuel and the market of whoever built it. Yours are different, and the moment a homeowner pushes back you have to defend a number you cannot explain. A price you cannot explain is a price you will discount.
This is also why there is no price list to download from this page. We have no way to know what your work costs you, and a national average would be a number we made up.
Convert ten tasks, not the whole catalog
The tasks that fill your week are a short list, and they are the ones where a fixed price actually changes the conversation on the phone. Do those. Everything else can stay on time and materials until you have timings for it, and there is no rule saying a shop has to be entirely one or the other.
The seasonal maintenance visit is the easiest first conversion: you schedule it, so the drive time per visit is lower and more predictable than anything reactive. If those visits are sold on a plan, the coverage that decides what is inside the flat price is set out on the maintenance agreement template.
Somewhere to keep the book
A price book in a binder is a price book that gets rounded down at the kitchen table. Save each priced task as a line in your price list and it comes up already filled in on the next quote, at the number you worked out when you were thinking clearly rather than the number you can remember in a hot attic.
The builder is the paid part of this site: $29 a month for the shop, never per technician, cancel in one click. The price and the terms are on one page. It ships with no prices in it, which is deliberate: the prices are yours. This guide and the worksheet below are free either way.
Download the blank price book worksheet PDF
Related
The hourly rate this whole method rests on is the HVAC labor rate calculator, and the parts side is markup vs margin. Once a task is priced, the document it goes on is the HVAC estimate template, and building that on a phone is the estimate software.
Flat rate pricing questions
What is flat rate pricing in HVAC?
You quote a fixed price for a task rather than billing hours and parts as they land. The homeowner hears one number before the work starts and it does not move if the job runs long. What changes for you is where the risk sits: on time and materials the customer carries the overrun, on flat rate you do.
How do you build an HVAC flat rate price book?
Work out your hourly rate first, time each task on real jobs rather than guessing, then price each task as hours times your rate, plus parts at your markup, plus a callback reserve. Convert the ten tasks you do most often first. A price book with the whole catalog in it and no timings behind it is worse than no price book at all.
Is flat rate pricing better than hourly for a small shop?
It is better for the customer conversation and worse for your downside on any single job. A homeowner can say yes to a number. He cannot say yes to an unknown. The trade is that a job that runs long is now your problem, which is what the callback reserve and honest timings are for.
What should the callback reserve be?
It is a percentage of the whole price, not of the parts, because a callback costs you the entire trip. The right figure comes from your own callback rate: if roughly one job in twenty comes back, the reserve has to cover that trip across the other nineteen. Count yours for a quarter before you set it.
Do you sell a ready made HVAC price book?
No, and we are not going to. A price book built on somebody else's wage, somebody else's insurance and somebody else's market is wrong on the day it ships, and you cannot defend a number you did not build. What this site sells is the tool that stores your own priced lines and puts them on a quote without retyping.