Handyman Price List Template: Built From One Hourly Floor, Not Memory

Most handyman pricing lives in one place: the owner head. A faucet swap costs what it cost last time, adjusted by mood and how the morning went. That works until a helper starts quoting, or a customer asks why the same task cost two different prices on two different streets. A price list moves the pricing out of memory and onto one page, built from one number you set on purpose: your hourly floor.

The floor is the hourly labor rate a job has to clear for the business to make money after wages, fuel, insurance, and the hours nobody bills. Every task on the list is built from it. Change the floor once, and the whole list moves with it.

Start with the floor, not the task list

Pick the floor from your costs, not from what the shop across town charges. Add up what an hour of your labor really costs the business, then add the margin the business needs on top. That total is the floor. It will feel high the first time you write it down. The gap between the floor and the number in your head is usually the gap between staying busy and making money.

Write the other two inputs beside it: the labor margin you build into tasks that run long, and the markup you put on materials. Three inputs, set once. Everything else on the list is arithmetic off those three numbers.

Every task gets hours and materials

With the inputs set, build the task rows. Each task gets three things: a name a customer would use, the hours it honestly takes, and the materials it usually eats. Hang a ceiling fan: the hours include the trip up the ladder twice and the old fixture coming down, not just the new one going up. Patch drywall: hours for two trips or one long wait, plus compound, tape, and paint.

Price the task the way it actually runs, not the way it runs on the best day. A task priced on its best day loses money on its average day, and most days are average. When a task keeps overrunning its hours, the fix is to change the hours on the list, not to quietly charge more at the door. The list should describe your real work. That is what makes the quotes that come off it hold up.

The exact prices matter less than where they came from. A number built from your inputs can be defended, repeated, and handed to someone else to quote from.

The minimum charge sits at the top

Small jobs are where handyman pricing leaks. The task takes twenty minutes. The drive, setup, cleanup, and paperwork take an hour around it. Price the task alone and the day fills with work that never had a chance to pay.

Put a minimum charge at the top of the list and apply it without apology: any visit bills at least the minimum, whatever the task rows add up to. It is the price of rolling a stocked truck to a house, and customers accept it far more easily printed on a list than invented at the door after the work is done.

The minimum also sorts your calls. Jobs that cannot clear it get grouped by area or politely passed on. Jobs that clear it get booked on the spot.

Three tiers off the same inputs

One task, three prices, all built from the same row. Standard is the list price, the number you quote for scheduled work in normal hours. After-Hours is the standard price times 1.5, for the evening and weekend calls where the customer needs it done now: the leaking shutoff valve at 8 pm does not get quoted at the Tuesday morning rate. While You Are Here is the standard price times 0.8, for the extra task the customer adds while you are already in the house with your tools out: the drive is paid, the setup is done, so the add-on costs less and still makes money.

The tiers do two things. They make the after-hours price a policy instead of a negotiation held in a doorway with water on the floor. And they turn the while you are here moment, which happens on most visits, into a priced offer instead of free work done to be nice. A customer who hears the add-on price is lower because you are already here feels treated fairly, because they were.

Keep the multipliers steady. The moment the tiers become whatever feels right that day, the list is back in your head, and the whole exercise was typing.

The quote at the door becomes a lookup

With the list built, quoting changes shape. A customer walks you through the house pointing at jobs. You are not calculating, you are looking up: task, tier, price, written on the quote as you go. Three small jobs, three list prices, one total, given on the spot while the customer is still nodding.

That speed is worth money by itself. A price given at the door closes while the customer can see the problem. A price that has to go home and get figured out competes with everything else the customer thinks about that week. And every customer pays the same price for the same task, which is the fact that keeps referrals clean.

Review the list on a schedule, twice a year is enough. Raise the floor when your costs rise, fix the hours on tasks that overrun, add the new tasks you kept quoting from scratch. Twenty minutes at the desk, and every quote after it is right.

The list described here ships in the Handyman Starter 3-Pack as the 45-task Price Book: enter your hourly floor, labor margin, and material markup once, and the Standard, After-Hours (x1.5), and While You Are Here (x0.8) tiers generate on their own. The pack also includes the Quote Builder, which pulls Standard prices from the Price Book automatically, and the Invoice + Profit sheet, which tracks deposits and payments and checks the profit on each job after it is done.