HVAC Repair Price Calculator · guide
Short answer: work out what one billable hour truly costs you, price three options for the same fault from that, and then check what an average call earns at the mix of options your customers actually choose. The calculator does it with your own numbers and builds a price book you can export as CSV.
Everything below is arithmetic on invented numbers. Not business, tax, legal or licensing advice. Costs, prices and rules belong to your shop and your area. No warranty.
A technician paid $36 an hour with 25 percent burden costs $45.00 an hour loaded, or $93,600.00 over 2,080 paid hours. Only 1,200 of those hours are sold; the rest is driving between calls, supply-house runs, callbacks and paperwork, so each billable hour carries $78.00 of wages. Add $17,000 for the van, $7,000 of insurance, $5,000 of gauges and tools and $13,000 of phone, software, licence, EPA certification and marketing: $42,000.00 a year, or $35.00 per billable hour. The true cost is $113.00 an hour.
If you count every paid hour as billable, the same shop looks like $65.19 an hour and the Good repair below prices at $575.00 instead of $745.00; at 1,000 billable hours the cost is $135.60 and Good needs $825.00.
The drive (0.75 hours) plus the diagnosis (0.75 hours) is 1.5 hours, a cost of $169.50. At a 35 percent margin that is $260.77, rounded up to a $265.00 diagnostic fee. If the customer approves any repair, the fee is credited against it, so the Good option is $745.00 on the quote and $480.00 due after the credit.
Each option is 0.75 hours of travel plus its time on site. Parts and equipment are marked up on tiers like tax brackets: 100 percent on the first $100, 60 percent from $100 to $500, 40 percent from $500 to $2,000 and 30 percent above that. A 3 percent callback reserve is built into each price.
Suppose 20 percent of calls end with the diagnostic fee and nothing else, and of the customers who approve work 50 percent take Good, 35 percent Better and 15 percent Best. An average call tickets $1,832.20 and earns $580.14. If you offered only the Good repair it would earn $249.82 on a $649.00 ticket, so three options add $330.32 a call. Each 10 points of approvals that move from Good to Best add $171.69 a call. Those shares are assumptions: count a month of your own tickets before you trust them.
Price each option the same way: your true cost per billable hour times its hours including the drive, divided by one minus your target margin, plus parts or equipment at a tiered markup, grossed up for a callback reserve and rounded up. On the default numbers that gives $745.00 for Good, $1,480.00 for Better and $8,890.00 for Best.
Because most of its price is equipment, which carries the lowest markup tier. On the defaults Best leaves $2,434.55, the most dollars of the three, at a margin of 27.4%, while Good leaves $288.40 at 38.7%. Judge an option by the dollars and the hours it ties up as well as the percentage.
At least the drive and the time on site to find the fault, at true cost and your margin. On the defaults that is 1.5 hours, $169.50 of cost and a $265.00 fee, which many shops credit against the repair the customer approves.
No. It is arithmetic on invented numbers; check every figure against your own records. Not business, tax, legal or licensing advice. No warranty.