Updated August 2026 · 10 min read
General guidance for Irish trade businesses, not financial advice. Your numbers are your own; run them with your accountant.
There are two ways to price a job. The first is to charge roughly what your competitors charge, adjust it by how the month is going, and hope. The second is to know what an hour of your business actually costs, and price so that every job pays for itself and leaves something behind. The first method is how you can be one of the busiest tradespeople in town and still wonder where the money went at the end of the year. This guide is the second method.
Start with what an hour really costs you
Your rate is not your wage. The gap between the two is where trade businesses quietly lose money.
If it's just you, the cost of an hour includes what you need to earn, but also a share of everything it takes to be available to work at all: the van and its diesel, insurance, tools and their replacement, the phone, the software, the accountant, and the hours nobody pays for. Quoting, driving between jobs, collecting materials, chasing payments: all real hours, all unbillable, all needing to be paid for by the hours you do bill.
If you employ people, an employee's hour costs more than the wage you pay for it: employer's PRSI, holiday pay, and the cover when they're off all sit on top. Price off the bare wage and every hour they work loses you money before materials are even counted.
The overhead sum most people never do
Here's the one calculation worth doing once a year, on paper, honestly.
Add up a full year's overheads and running costs that aren't already counted inside your job costs: vehicle costs, insurance, tools, phone, software, accountancy fees, advertising, workwear, the lot. Then estimate your real billable hours for the year, and be brutal about it. Nobody bills every hour they work; between travel, quoting, paperwork, collecting materials and the quiet weeks, the hours you can actually charge for may be far fewer than the hours you spend working. Divide the first number by the second.
That figure is your overhead per billable hour, and every hour you charge has to carry it before you've earned anything. Most people who do this sum for the first time discover their "decent" hourly rate was covering the wage and quietly eating the business.
Markup is not margin
The single most common pricing mistake in the trades is thinking these are the same thing.
Say a job costs you €600 all-in and you charge €720. You added 20% to your costs: that's a 20% markup. But the profit is €120 out of €720 charged, which is roughly a 17% margin. Add 20% and you are not "making 20% on the job"; you're making less, every time. It's a small gap on one job and a serious one across a year. Decide the margin you want to end the year with, then work backwards to the markup that delivers it, and know which number you're talking about when you set your prices.
(The €600 example is arithmetic, not a suggested job cost.)
Fixed price, hourly, or day rate
Each has its place, and the trick is matching the model to the job rather than using one for everything.
Fixed price is often the easiest sell, because the customer knows exactly what they're committing to. It suits any job you've done often enough to predict: a standard service, a bathroom, a rewire of a known house type. The risk is yours, so the price must carry a contingency for the surprises, and your time estimate has to be honest. The universal failure here is optimism: tradespeople underestimate how long jobs take, consistently, and fixed pricing turns that optimism straight into lost money. Track your actual hours against what you quoted, and your estimates will stop lying to you within a few months.
Hourly protects you when the job can't be predicted: fault-finding, opening up an old wall, anything where nobody knows what's in there until it's open. Customers accept it more readily when you pair it with communication: your rates and any callout charge stated clearly up front, an expected range, and a call the moment it looks like running past it.
Day rate suits longer runs of work and subcontracting, where you're selling your time in blocks rather than outcomes.
And for the small stuff: have a minimum charge. A twenty-minute job still costs you the drive there, the drive back, and a slot in the day. Your minimum charge isn't a penalty for a small job; it's the price of sending a business to one.
Be clear about what the price includes
A good price isn't just a number. It's a description of the work that number covers.
For a fixed-price job, spell out the assumptions that matter: what you're supplying, what the customer is supplying, what the labour covers, what happens if hidden problems turn up once the work is open, and what's not included. Then hold the line: when the scope grows, price the extra work rather than quietly absorbing it. A profitable job becomes an unprofitable one through nothing more than "while you're here" jobs disappearing into the original price, one favour at a time.
Materials: your real cost, plus a consistent markup
Start with your actual trade cost for the materials, then add a consistent markup to cover sourcing, collection, carrying stock in the van, and the risk of damage and returns. Don't forget wastage and the small stuff: offcuts, fixings, sealant, consumables. The material cost of a job is rarely just the items that appear neatly on the final invoice.
Two honest rules keep you out of trouble. Don't price off the retail figure while paying the trade figure and then add markup on top again; pick one basis. And when a customer supplies their own materials, the labour doesn't get cheaper: your time, your workmanship risk and your handling are all still real. Be clear up front about what happens if customer-supplied materials turn out to be unsuitable, missing or faulty, because that conversation is far easier before the job than during it.
The VAT line on your quote
One legal point every Irish trade business should know. When you're dealing with a householder, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (the CCPC, the State's consumer watchdog) is direct about it in its guidance for business: prices shown to consumers must include all applicable taxes, such as VAT, and there should be no hidden charges. And where the price genuinely can't be worked out in advance, its guidance is that you tell the customer the manner in which the price is to be calculated.
In practice that gives you a simple rule for each kind of job. A fixed-price job for a householder: quote the total, VAT included. A job that can't be priced up front, like fault-finding charged by the hour: state your rates, any callout charge and how the total will be worked out, before you start. Advertising "plus VAT" prices to householders isn't how consumer pricing is meant to be presented. Business customers are different: quoting businesses ex-VAT with the VAT shown separately is normal practice.
Which VAT rate applies to which kind of work is its own subject with real traps in it, and we're covering it properly in our Money and VAT guides. Until then: your accountant, not a guess.
Put it in writing, and review it once a year
The habit that makes all of the above stick is a written price list: your hourly and day rates, your minimum charge, your standard jobs at standard prices, your materials markup policy. It makes quoting fast, it makes your pricing consistent instead of mood-based, and it gives you one place to apply an increase when diesel, insurance or materials move, which they will. A price list you haven't reviewed in two years is a pay cut you gave yourself without noticing.
On bigger quotes, put an expiry on the price. Supplier costs move, and a quote accepted months after it was written may no longer reflect what the job costs you by the time you're doing it.
Where JobFlow fits
JobFlow holds that price list for you: fixed prices, per-quantity rates and hourly rates in one catalogue, so a quote is built by picking lines rather than typing numbers from memory, with the correct Irish VAT applied per line. Job templates mean your standard jobs start pre-priced. When you find extra work on site, it's added from the same price list with the customer's agreement captured, so discovered work becomes billed work instead of a favour. And if the price on a quote you've already sent changes, JobFlow warns you before you resend, showing what you sent, when, and what it would be now.
One honest limit: JobFlow prices and bills the revenue side of the job. It doesn't track your cost side, so the overhead sum above stays between you, a spreadsheet and your accountant if you want a proper cost model. It also has no quote expiry date, so the review habit above is yours to keep.
Questions tradespeople ask about pricing jobs
How do I work out my hourly rate as a tradesperson?
Start with what the business needs to generate, not what competitors charge. Work out the annual figure that covers your own earnings, your business overheads and the profit you want, then divide it by the hours you realistically expect to bill. The commonest mistake is dividing by the hours you work rather than the smaller number of hours you can actually charge for.
Should I charge a fixed price or by the hour?
Fixed price for work you can predict, hourly for work you can't, like fault-finding or anything hidden until it's opened up. Fixed pricing is often easier for a customer to say yes to, but it carries the time risk, so build in contingency and track your actual hours against your quotes.
Do quotes have to include VAT in Ireland?
For householders, prices shown to consumers must include all applicable taxes, such as VAT, with no hidden charges. Where the price cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, the CCPC's guidance is that you tell the customer the manner in which the price will be calculated. Business-to-business prices are commonly quoted excluding VAT, with the VAT shown separately.
How much should I mark up materials?
There's no single right number, but there is a right method: start from what the materials actually cost you, add a consistent markup for sourcing, collection, wastage and risk, and don't combine a retail price with a markup on top. Set the policy once, apply it every time.
Sources
- Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, "Product prices" (guidelines for business). Prices shown to consumers including all applicable taxes, and what to do where the price cannot reasonably be calculated in advance.
- Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, "Pricing" (consumer guidance), the same rules from the customer's side.
Practical guides for Irish trades. Related: how quoting works in JobFlow, get paid faster after the job and when a spreadsheet stops being enough.