The clearest sign you are not charging enough is that jobs look profitable on paper but the bank account does not grow. You stay busy, you collect payment, and yet there is never quite enough left over after bills. That gap usually points to a pricing problem, not a volume problem.

To find out, you need to know your full job cost: burdened labor, all direct expenses, overhead share, and the markup needed to hit your target margin. If your current prices do not cover all of those, you are undercharging. The pricing quiz above walks through six categories of cost and gives you a score that shows where the gaps are most likely to be. Use it as a starting point before changing any prices.

A complete job price should include burdened labor for all paid crew time, materials with markup, all direct job expenses such as fuel, delivery, disposal, permits, rentals, and subcontractors, an overhead share, and a profit margin. Most contractors include labor and materials. The costs that get missed most often are travel time, supplier pickup time, material handling, waste, and overhead.

Each of those missing costs reduces the profit on every job they are left out of. The pricing quiz above covers all six cost categories and shows which ones your current process handles well and which ones need attention. Run through it before your next estimate review.

There is no single correct profit margin for every contractor. The right number depends on your trade, your market, your overhead structure, your risk tolerance, and your business goals. What matters is that the margin is intentional, calculated, and consistent, not guessed at.

A useful starting point is to calculate your full job cost, including burdened labor, all direct expenses, and overhead, and then decide what percentage of the selling price should remain as profit after those costs. That target percentage becomes your pricing floor. The quiz above can help you identify whether your current process is likely to hit that floor or fall short of it.

Gross profit margin varies by trade, business size, and overhead structure. A remodeler with high overhead needs a different margin than a solo handyman with minimal fixed costs. The right margin for your business is the one that covers your overhead and leaves a net profit after all costs are paid, including your own wages.

Rather than targeting an industry average, calculate your own overhead per billable hour, add your required profit, and work backward to find the markup that produces the margin you need. The pricing quiz above can help you see whether your current pricing habits are likely to produce a consistent margin or whether gaps in the process are quietly reducing it.

Markup is calculated on cost. Margin is calculated on selling price. A 30 percent markup on a $1,000 job cost produces a $1,300 selling price and a 23.1 percent gross margin, not 30 percent. If you apply a 30 percent markup expecting a 30 percent margin, your actual margin is about 7 points lower than your target on every job.

To hit a 30 percent margin, you need to apply a 42.9 percent markup to job cost. The formula is: required markup equals target margin divided by one minus target margin. This is one of the most common and costly pricing errors in contracting. The quiz above includes a question on this topic and scores your understanding of it.

Markup is the percentage added to job cost to produce the selling price. To calculate it, divide the profit amount by the job cost and multiply by 100. For example, if a job costs $1,000 and you add $300, the markup is 30 percent and the selling price is $1,300.

To find the markup needed to hit a specific gross margin target, use this formula: required markup equals target margin divided by one minus target margin. For a 35 percent target margin: 0.35 divided by 0.65 equals 0.538, or a 53.8 percent markup. Run through the assessment above to see how your current markup and margin habits score against a complete pricing process.

To produce a 30 percent gross profit margin, you need to apply a 42.9 percent markup to your job cost. The formula is: required markup equals 0.30 divided by 0.70, which equals 0.4286, or approximately 42.9 percent.

If you apply a 30 percent markup instead, you will produce a 23.1 percent margin, not 30 percent. That 7-point gap compounds across every job. On a $10,000 job, the difference between a 23 percent and a 30 percent margin is $700 in profit. Take the quiz above to see how your current pricing process handles markup and margin, and which other categories may need attention.

Markup and margin use different denominators. Markup divides the profit by cost. Margin divides the profit by selling price. Because the selling price is always higher than the cost, the margin percentage is always lower than the markup percentage for the same dollar amount of profit.

A 30 percent markup on a $1,000 cost produces a $1,300 selling price. The profit is $300. Divided by the selling price of $1,300, that is a 23.1 percent margin. Divided by the cost of $1,000, that is a 30 percent markup. Same dollars, different percentages. Confusing them causes real pricing errors. The quiz above tests your understanding of this distinction and scores it as part of the markup and margin category.

The real labor cost per hour is the burdened labor rate, which includes the base wage plus all employer-paid costs on top of it. Those additional costs typically include FICA payroll taxes at 7.65 percent of wages, federal and state unemployment taxes, workers compensation insurance, health and dental benefits if provided, and the cost of paid time off.

To calculate it, add up all of those annual costs for a given employee, then divide by the number of hours the employee is expected to work in a year. The result is the true cost per hour. Using only the wage in estimates means every job is subsidizing the difference. The quiz above scores how your labor pricing handles burden and paid time.

Labor burden is the total cost of employing a worker beyond the base wage. It includes all employer-paid taxes, insurance, and benefits. Common components are FICA payroll taxes, federal and state unemployment insurance, workers compensation premiums, health insurance contributions, and the cost of paid time off such as vacation and holidays.

For most contractors, labor burden adds 20 to 35 percent to the base wage. The exact percentage depends on your trade, your state, your workers compensation classification, and your benefit package. Pricing the wage alone and ignoring burden means every job is losing that percentage of labor cost to unrecovered expense. Take the quiz above to see how your labor pricing scores across all three labor questions.

Labor burden includes every employer-paid cost associated with having an employee on payroll. The most common items are FICA taxes at 7.65 percent of wages, federal unemployment tax, state unemployment tax, workers compensation insurance, general liability insurance attributed to labor, health and dental insurance contributions, paid vacation and holiday time, and any other paid leave or benefit the employer provides.

Some contractors also include a portion of small tool costs and safety equipment in the labor burden calculation. The goal is to capture every dollar the business spends per employee hour so that the estimate reflects the real cost. The quiz above covers labor burden as part of the labor and crew cost category.

Crew cost per hour is the total burdened labor cost for all crew members working on a job, divided by the number of hours worked. For a two-person crew where one worker costs $38 per hour burdened and the other costs $32 per hour burdened, the crew cost is $70 per hour.

To use this in estimates, multiply the crew cost per hour by the estimated hours for each task. Include all paid time, not just hands-on work time. Travel, setup, cleanup, supplier runs, and loading and unloading are all paid hours that belong in the estimate. The quiz above tests whether your estimates include all paid crew time or only the main work hours.

Yes. Travel time is paid crew time. If your crew drives 45 minutes to a job site, those 45 minutes are on the clock. The cost is real whether it is in the estimate or not. If it is not in the estimate, it reduces the profit on every job with significant travel.

How you handle it in the estimate depends on your business model. Some contractors build travel into their overhead or minimum job charge. Others estimate it as a direct labor cost per job. Either approach works as long as the cost is recovered somewhere in the price. The quiz above includes a question on which paid crew time makes it into your estimates.

Yes. Supplier pickup time is paid crew time. If a crew member spends an hour driving to the supply house, waiting, loading, and returning, that hour has a real labor cost. If it is not in the estimate, the job absorbs it as an unrecovered cost.

On jobs that require multiple supplier runs, the total time can be significant. A job with three supplier trips at an hour each represents three hours of paid time that may not be in the estimate at all. The quiz above covers this as part of the labor and crew cost category. Run through it to see how your current estimates handle supplier and travel time.

Yes. Setup and cleanup are paid hours. The crew is on the clock during those activities, and the labor cost is real. If the estimate only includes the hours spent on the main work, the setup and cleanup time is absorbed as an unrecovered cost.

On some job types, setup and cleanup represent a significant portion of total time. A painting job might require two hours of prep and masking before a brush touches the wall. A concrete pour might require an hour of cleanup after the work is done. Including those hours in the estimate is part of pricing the full job, not just the visible work. The quiz above scores this as part of the labor and crew cost category.

Accurate labor hour estimates come from tracking actual hours on completed jobs and using that data to build production rates. A production rate tells you how many units of work a crew can complete per hour under typical conditions. With production rates, you multiply the quantity of work by the rate to get the estimated hours.

Without historical data, estimates are based on experience and judgment. The risk is that the same errors repeat on similar jobs because there is no feedback loop. Comparing estimated hours with actual hours after each job builds the data needed to improve estimates over time. The quiz above includes a question on how often you compare estimated and actual labor hours.

When a job runs over on hours, the first step is to find out why. Was the scope larger than estimated? Did the crew encounter unexpected conditions? Were the original labor hours underestimated? Each cause has a different fix. Scope changes should be handled through a change order. Unexpected conditions may justify a conversation with the customer. Estimating errors should be corrected in the pricing system before the next similar job is quoted.

Without that review, the same overrun repeats on the next similar job. The quiz above covers job costing and estimate versus actual reviews as part of the final category. Take the assessment to see how your current process handles completed job reviews.

To calculate overhead, list every business expense that is not directly tied to a specific job. Include rent or storage, vehicle payments and insurance, phone and internet, software subscriptions, advertising, accounting fees, licenses, and any other fixed or semi-fixed cost. Add them up for a monthly total.

To recover overhead through job prices, divide the monthly overhead total by the number of billable crew hours in a typical month. That gives you an overhead cost per billable hour. Add that amount to every estimate for every hour of crew time. The quiz above tests whether you know your monthly overhead number and how you include it in job prices.

Overhead includes every business expense that runs whether you work or not. Common items are office or storage rent, vehicle payments and insurance, fuel for non-job travel, phone and internet service, estimating and accounting software, advertising and marketing, accounting and bookkeeping fees, business licenses and permits, professional memberships, and owner wages when treated as a business expense.

Direct job costs such as materials, labor, and job-specific rentals are not overhead. They are direct costs that belong in the job estimate. Overhead is the layer of cost that sits above the direct costs and must be recovered across all jobs. The quiz above covers how you track and recover overhead as part of the overhead and business cost category.

The most common method is to calculate an overhead cost per billable crew hour and add it to the labor estimate for each job. If your monthly overhead is $6,000 and your crew works 150 billable hours per month, your overhead cost per billable hour is $40. A job that takes 20 crew hours carries $800 in overhead.

An alternative method is to use an overhead percentage of total direct costs. Both methods work if the numbers are based on real overhead data and updated regularly. The quiz above tests which method you use and how consistently you apply it. Run through the assessment to see how your overhead recovery scores.

An overhead percentage can work if it is based on real overhead data and applied consistently. The risk is that a flat percentage does not adjust for jobs with unusual labor or material ratios. A job with very high material costs and low labor hours may over-recover overhead if the percentage is applied to total cost. A job with high labor and low materials may under-recover it.

An overhead cost per billable hour is often more accurate for labor-intensive businesses because it ties overhead recovery directly to the time the crew spends on the job. Either method is better than not recovering overhead at all. The quiz above includes questions on how you calculate and apply overhead to job prices.

Overhead per billable hour is the total monthly overhead divided by the number of hours the crew is expected to work on billable jobs in a month. It tells you how much overhead cost each hour of crew time must recover.

For example, if monthly overhead is $7,500 and the crew works 150 billable hours per month, the overhead per billable hour is $50. Every estimate should include $50 per crew hour to recover overhead. If a job takes 12 hours, it carries $600 in overhead. This method makes overhead recovery concrete and consistent rather than approximate. Take the quiz above to see how your overhead practices score.

Owner wages are a business expense, not profit. When the owner works in the business, that labor has a cost just like any employee. If the owner does not pay themselves a market-rate wage and instead treats all leftover money as profit, the business looks more profitable than it actually is.

Treating owner wages as overhead and including them in the overhead recovery calculation gives a more accurate picture of what the business actually earns. True business profit is what remains after all costs, including owner wages, are covered. The quiz above includes a question on how owner pay is handled in your pricing process.

Yes. Materials cost more than the invoice price once you account for the time spent purchasing them, the cost of carrying them, waste and damage, delivery or pickup costs, and the risk of price changes between estimate and installation. Passing materials at cost means the business absorbs all of those additional costs from profit.

A material markup covers those real costs and protects the margin on the material portion of the job. The appropriate markup depends on the type of materials, the purchasing process, and the level of waste and handling involved. The quiz above includes a question on how you currently charge for materials and whether your markup covers the full cost of providing them.

There is no universal material markup that applies to every contractor. The right number depends on your purchasing process, the type of materials, the level of waste, delivery costs, and the time spent sourcing and managing materials. A contractor who orders everything online with free delivery and minimal waste has different costs than one who makes daily supplier runs with significant material handling.

A reasonable starting point is to calculate the actual cost of providing materials, including purchase price, waste, delivery, handling, and purchasing time, and set a markup that covers those costs plus a margin contribution. Review it when supplier prices change significantly. The quiz above scores your material markup practices as part of the materials and direct expenses category.

Yes. Managing a subcontractor takes time and carries risk. You coordinate the work, manage the schedule, handle customer communication, and take responsibility for the quality of the finished product. Those are real costs that belong in the price.

A subcontractor markup covers your coordination time, the risk of rework, and the overhead associated with managing the relationship. Passing subcontractor costs through at invoice price means you are managing that work for free. The quiz above covers direct job expenses including subcontractors as part of the materials and direct expenses category.

Equipment costs can be included in estimates as a direct job expense for rented equipment or as a cost-per-hour rate for owned equipment. For owned equipment, the rate should cover depreciation, maintenance, fuel, insurance, and the cost of eventual replacement.

Many contractors include rented equipment in estimates but forget to charge for owned equipment. If a piece of equipment wears out and the business has not been recovering its cost through job prices, the replacement comes out of profit or cash reserves. The quiz above includes equipment as part of the direct expenses question in the materials and direct expenses category.

Fuel and vehicle costs are real business expenses. The question is whether they are recovered through overhead or as a direct job expense. For most contractors, vehicle costs are included in overhead and recovered through the overhead per billable hour calculation. For jobs with significant travel or unusual fuel use, a direct job expense may be more accurate.

Either way, the cost needs to be recovered somewhere in the price. If vehicle costs are in overhead but the overhead number is not included in estimates, the cost is still being absorbed from profit. The quiz above covers how you handle overhead recovery and direct job expenses in separate questions.

A minimum job charge is the lowest price a contractor will accept for any job, regardless of how small the scope is. It exists because every job, no matter how brief, has a minimum cost: driving to the site, setting up, doing the work, cleaning up, and driving back. That minimum cost must be recovered in the price.

Without a minimum charge, small jobs can easily lose money even when the work itself is priced correctly. A one-hour repair that requires 45 minutes of travel each way and 30 minutes of setup and cleanup is actually a three-hour job. The minimum charge ensures the price reflects the real cost of doing the work. The quiz above includes a question on whether you have a minimum job charge and how it is calculated.

To calculate a minimum service charge, add up the minimum costs of any job: the minimum crew time at the burdened labor rate, the cost of travel to and from the job, the overhead share for that time, the minimum material cost, and the required profit. The total is your floor price.

For example, if the minimum crew time is two hours at $70 per hour burdened, travel costs $40, overhead for two hours is $80, minimum materials are $20, and required profit is $50, the minimum charge is $260. Any job priced below that number is likely to lose money. Run through the quiz above to see how your minimum charge practices score in the markup and margin category.

Small jobs lose money when the fixed cost of mobilizing for the job exceeds the profit built into the price. Every job requires travel, setup, and cleanup regardless of the scope. Those costs are the same whether the job takes one hour or eight hours. On a small job, those fixed costs represent a much larger percentage of the total price.

A minimum job charge protects against this by setting a floor that covers the fixed costs of any job. Without it, a contractor can stay busy with small jobs and still lose money on many of them. The quiz above covers minimum job charges as part of the markup, margin, and selling price category. Take the assessment to see how your small job pricing holds up.

A contingency allowance protects the estimate against reasonable unknowns: material waste above the standard rate, minor scope additions, weather delays, or other predictable surprises. Without a contingency, every unexpected cost comes directly out of profit.

The appropriate contingency percentage depends on the job type and the level of uncertainty in the scope. A straightforward repeat job with a well-defined scope needs less contingency than a renovation with hidden conditions. The quiz above includes a question on how you protect estimates against waste and unknowns as part of the materials and direct expenses category.

An estimate is an approximate price based on available information. It may change as the scope becomes clearer. A quote is a fixed price for a defined scope of work. When the customer accepts a quote, the price is set unless the scope changes through a change order.

The distinction matters because it sets customer expectations about price certainty. Many contractors use the terms interchangeably, which can create disputes when the final invoice differs from the original number. Being clear about which one you are providing, and what conditions might change the price, reduces misunderstandings and protects your terms. The quiz above covers customer terms and job protection as a separate category.

A quote expiration date protects you from being held to a price after material costs, labor rates, or other inputs have changed. A quote that stays open indefinitely can become unprofitable if a customer accepts it months after it was written and costs have risen in the meantime.

Common expiration periods range from 15 to 30 days for most residential work. Longer projects or those with significant material cost exposure may warrant shorter validity periods. Including an expiration date on every quote is a simple protection that most contractors skip. The quiz above covers customer terms and job protection as part of the fifth category.

Yes, in most cases. A deposit protects your cash flow by ensuring you have funds to purchase materials before the job starts. It also reduces the risk of non-payment by giving the customer skin in the game before work begins. A customer who has paid a deposit is more committed to the project than one who has paid nothing.

The appropriate deposit amount depends on the job size, the material cost, and the payment risk. Jobs with significant material purchases often justify a deposit equal to the material cost. The quiz above includes a question on how you handle deposits and payment schedules as part of the customer terms and job protection category.

The right deposit amount depends on the job. For jobs with significant upfront material costs, a deposit equal to the material cost is reasonable. For larger projects, a deposit of 25 to 50 percent of the total price is common. For smaller jobs, a flat minimum deposit may make more sense than a percentage.

Some states regulate the maximum deposit a contractor can collect, particularly for home improvement work. Check the rules in your state before setting a deposit policy. The quiz above covers deposits and payment schedules as part of the customer terms and job protection category. Take the assessment to see how your payment terms score.

A written change order documents the additional scope, the added price, and the customer’s approval before the extra work begins. Without it, extra work is often done as a goodwill gesture and never collected. The contractor remembers a verbal agreement. The customer remembers a different conversation. The dispute is difficult to resolve without documentation.

Change orders also protect against scope creep, where small additions accumulate into significant unpaid work over the course of a project. Each addition seems minor. The total is not. The quiz above includes a question on how you handle work outside the original estimate as part of the customer terms and job protection category.

A discount request is an opportunity to trade, not to give. If the customer wants a lower price, offer to reduce the scope, adjust the payment terms, or change the schedule in exchange. A price reduction without a corresponding trade is a direct reduction in profit with no benefit to the business.

Protecting the required profit margin on every job is not about being inflexible. It is about knowing your costs and not pricing below them. If the job cannot be done profitably at the requested price, it may be better to decline it than to accept it at a loss. The quiz above includes a question on how you respond to discount requests as part of the customer terms category.

Credit card processing fees are a real business cost. If customers regularly pay by card, those fees reduce the net amount received on every job. The options are to include the expected processing cost in overhead, to add a surcharge for card payments where permitted by law, or to build it into the base price.

Ignoring processing fees means they come out of profit on every card transaction. On a $5,000 job with a 3 percent processing fee, that is $150 off the top. Over a year of card payments, it adds up. Check your state’s rules on surcharges before adding them to invoices. The quiz above covers customer terms and payment practices as part of the fifth category.

Callbacks and warranty work have a real cost: crew time, travel, materials, and overhead. If those costs are not planned for, they come as a surprise and reduce profit on the original job. One approach is to include a small warranty or callback allowance in the overhead calculation so that the expected cost of warranty work is spread across all jobs rather than hitting individual jobs as a surprise.

Tracking callback rates by job type also helps identify quality or estimating problems that generate repeated warranty costs. A high callback rate on a specific type of work is a signal that something in the process, the estimate, or the execution needs to change. The quiz above covers job costing and price control in the final category.

Job costing is the process of tracking the actual costs of a completed job and comparing them with the original estimate. It shows whether the job earned the expected profit or fell short, and it identifies where the difference came from.

A complete job cost review compares estimated labor hours with actual hours, estimated material cost with actual material cost, and estimated overhead with the overhead actually allocated to the job. The result is a clear picture of whether the pricing system is working or whether specific cost categories are consistently off. The quiz above includes job costing as the final category and scores how often you review completed jobs against estimates.

Start with the original estimate and list the estimated cost for each category: labor hours and cost, materials, direct expenses, and overhead. Then collect the actual numbers from the completed job: time records for labor hours, invoices for materials, and receipts for direct expenses. Compare the two columns and note the differences.

The differences tell you where the estimate was accurate and where it was off. Recurring differences in the same category point to a systematic estimating problem that can be corrected. The full pricing system at InstantSalesFunnels.com includes job costing worksheets designed for this comparison. The quiz above covers how often you perform this review as part of the job costing category.

Ideally, every completed job should be reviewed against the estimate. In practice, that may not be feasible for every small job. A reasonable approach is to review all jobs above a certain dollar threshold and any job that ran significantly over or under on time or materials.

The goal is to build a feedback loop between estimates and actual results. Without that loop, the same estimating errors repeat indefinitely. Even reviewing a sample of completed jobs regularly is better than reviewing none. The quiz above scores how often you compare estimated and actual results as part of the job costing and price control category.

Prices should be reviewed and updated whenever a significant cost changes, not on a fixed calendar schedule. Wages, materials, insurance, fuel, and overhead all change at different times and by different amounts. Waiting for an annual review means some cost increases go unrecovered for months.

A practical approach is to review labor rates after any wage change, update material costs after significant supplier price changes, and review overhead at least twice a year. The quiz above includes a question on how often you update your pricing numbers as part of the job costing and price control category. Run through the assessment to see where your update habits score.

The most effective approach is to be straightforward. Wages have increased. Material costs have risen. Insurance premiums are higher. These are real costs that affect every business in the trade. Customers who have worked with you before understand that costs change.

Giving customers advance notice of a price increase, rather than surprising them at invoice time, builds trust and reduces friction. Framing the increase in terms of the specific costs that have changed is more credible than a general statement about market conditions. The quiz above covers pricing update habits as part of the job costing and price control category.

The most useful response is to ask what they are comparing it to. If they have a lower quote, find out what is included. Scope differences, material quality differences, and warranty differences often explain price differences. If the comparison is apples to apples, you can explain what is included in your price without apologizing for it.

Dropping the price to match a competitor without understanding the difference is a common way to lose money on a job. If your price is based on real costs and a required margin, it is not too high. It may simply be higher than what a competitor is charging, which is a different problem. The quiz above covers how you set selling prices and respond to discount requests in the markup and customer terms categories.

Competitor pricing tells you what others are charging, but it does not tell you whether those prices are profitable. A competitor may be undercharging and not know it yet. Matching their price means matching their margin, which may be negative. Building your price around your own costs and required profit is more reliable than benchmarking against competitors whose cost structure you cannot see.

Competitor prices can be useful as a market reference, particularly when you are significantly higher or lower than the market. But they should inform your pricing, not determine it. The quiz above includes a question on how you decide what selling price to charge as part of the markup and margin category.

The contractor pricing quiz on this page covers 18 questions across six pricing categories: labor and crew cost, overhead and business cost, materials and direct expenses, markup and margin, customer terms and job protection, and job costing and price control. It produces a Contractor Pricing Score out of 100, six category scores, your three biggest pricing leaks, and three recommended actions.

No email is required. No account is needed. Results are shown immediately. The quiz is designed to function as a practical pricing diagnostic, not a personality quiz or a lead capture form. You can also add the complete quiz to your own website using the copy button in the sharing section above.

Start with the category that scored lowest. That is where the biggest pricing gaps are most likely to be. Read the recommended actions for that category and pick one to implement before your next estimate. Small, specific changes to the pricing process are more useful than trying to overhaul everything at once.

If your results show multiple weak categories, the Contractor Pricing and Job Costing System provides worksheets, calculators, and job review tools that address all six categories in a structured way. It is designed to help you build a repeatable pricing process rather than fixing one problem at a time.

Yes. The complete quiz is available to copy and install on your own website. Use the copy button in the sharing section above to get the full HTML. Paste it into a WordPress Custom HTML block or any page builder that accepts raw HTML. No iframe, no external scripts, and no account are required.

The copied quiz includes the complete start screen, all 18 questions, the progress bar, scoring, six category scores, personalized results, and the product call to action. Please keep the Powered by InstantSalesFunnels.com credit visible inside the quiz. The credit links back to the original quiz page and should remain readable on all screen sizes.