day rates/per hour ???

[glasgospark]

what do you guys reckon is average and what do you charge

obviously location will differ pricing

 

[accordfire]

all verbal only ,£250 for 2 sparks per day im killing myself at£300 a day

No option then but to stick to your guns mate ....

 

[glasgospark]

iv told him no chance i have already reduced dramatically , he says he will find sparks to do it for alot cheaper i.e gumtree guys on the brew no come back on job etc baring in mind its a huge house 4 storey with 20ft basement and we have wired all apart from a huge living room and the basement

 

[accordfire]

iv told him no chance i have already reduced dramatically , he says he will find sparks to do it for alot cheaper i.e gumtree guys on the brew no come back on job etc baring in mind its a huge house 4 storey with 20ft basement and we have wired all apart from a huge living room and the basement

Make sure you're paid to date for what you have done mate.

Then let him get his dossers in, and get ready to fix it at normal rates when that fu...blows up in his face

 

[glasgospark]

haha thanks m8 been paid at end of every working week so ok that way

i had to clarify i wasnt being an a*****e he had me second guessing myself

 

[Octopus]

Not that you've got him over a barrel but who in their right mind would change sparky/ boiler man half way through a project unless he's unhappy with the standard of the work.

Sure somebody will offer to do it for less, but at what cost? shoddy accessories? bodges? limited or zero testing? charges for 2nd fix fault finding?

If you can afford to, you should consider walking away.

 

[Welchyboy]

How much are you making on top for a pair of sparks at £300 if you don't mind me asking?

£250 for a pair of sparks is unreal, I would want at least £40 per man per day just for the hassle

Can you not supply a spark and a mate instead for £250

£120 for sparky

£80 for mate

 

[glasgospark]

well on this project i was 1 of the sparks paying the going rate to the 2nd as per sjib rates

£40 a day per spark profit ?

 

[MDJ]

if the spark is PAYE add 110% to his rate, if he is a subby add 50% onto what you pay him, JMO

 

[Guitarist]

As a limited company our rates vary depending on the work and the discipline.

For us, what we do gets split more than say fault and installs - we have consulting too.

What we always do, however, is base hourly rates on overheads plus. There are formulas for working it out.

Essentially, there's two elements to consider - the REAL cost of your time, PLUS your overheads, Plus a profit element.

Some overheads are fixed, others variable - those can be estimated initially and then more accurately as data is collected.

Examples of fixed overheads would be rent, rates, phone, vehicle rental/purchase, while examples of variable overheads would be things like Bank charges, fuel, advertising,

Let's take a broad example here:

Assume Joe Spark Ltd has decided he's in business and is trying to work out his rate:

He finds a small unit, kits it out with a phone, and so forth, gets a nice little van, and starts advertising. Phone starts ringing and he's asked to quote for work.

Suddenly he's thinking "How much should I charge" - I know all the other guys in my patch are somewhere between £30 and £50 an hour. The easy temptation is to simply pitch himself in the middle, and hope he's got enough to convince them he's worth it. It's the quickest way to get into trouble though. He has no idea if £40 an hour is enough to cover all his costs and make a profit (on which he would hope to be taxed).

So, he decides to be a little smarter, and sits down with his shiny new laptop, and his shiny new copy of Excel.

He doesn't start by assuming he'll have any sales, but needs to list everything he KNOWS he's going to pay for over the next twelve months. These are his fixed overheads. He lists all of those, and puts monthly costs next to them. He then totals them - let's say that comes to £20,000 for the year.

He then lists all his overheads that are not fixed - variable overheads, which he knows he's guessing to some extent, but can guess reasonably well. He knows, for example, that fuel is roughly £6 a gallon, and his van is doing 40 miles for each £6. He knows to add some for repairs, maintenance etc. He can gauge a rough cost from years of servicing the wife...s car.

So, he's worked out a fair idea of what he "might" be spending on variable overheads, and arrive at say another £15,000 for those bits.

He now knows his overheads are around £35,000 a year.

He then figures he's worth £25,000 in wages for his first year. Some people work this as a gross cost (e.g. come straight off the top line like stock, others, not) - for simplicity, not. We now know that Joe has expected outgoings (or overheads) of £60,000 for the year.

In the very simplest terms, he knows he has to earn £60,000 plus the cost of his materials to break even. He needs more to make profit.

Okay, so now he has most of the figures he needs to be able to work out the minimum he can charge per hour, assuming a few other factors.

Typically, in a first year, a good tradesman will work around 150 chargeable days. When he's really busy, that will be nearer the 220 most employees work. Initially, though, there's a 70 day shortfall - 14 working weeks! Realistically, then he's got to earn all that money in 38 weeks, or around 150 days, or 1200 hours.

First sum then - £60,000/1200 = £50 per hour. That looks high, and he hasn't even added anything for profit yet. So he now has some choices to make.

Either to reduce his overheads, pay himself less (most likely), or work more - try for maybe nearer the 220 days by working a Saturday too, for example - not forgetting he needs unpaid time to do books, quotes and so on. So he figures, ultimately, that he might not break even in year one (many do not, and this is important to be realistic about for banks). So he assumes that he may make a loss in year one, and decides that like most other companies, he has 220 days, or 1760 hours available as a maximum. This gives him a new sum of

£60,000/1760 = £34.10 - from which he can see his overheads are not unrealistic.

He then figures that 20% is a fair element for profit - so takes his £34.10 and adds 20% = £40.92 - he rounds this to £42 for ease of calculation and to cover some of his potential year one loss.

He now knows two things - £42 is a fair hourly rate for his business, as it covers costs and adds a little for profit or contingency. He also knows that in a worst case, he can drop to £35 and still cover costs.

From this, he knows that if he can secure 150 days of work, he will earn £50,400 - and if he can push it to 200, £67,200 - he actually needs 1429 hours or 179 days to break even at £60,000.

He now also knows where his mark up on materials might need to be - to cover shortfall at the lower end of workload, or indeed, as pure profit at the higher end. Assuming he gets only 150 hours, then he's looking to mark up a year's worth of materials by £10,000 or so. This side of things is more difficult, but typical mark up would be in the order of 30% - that is, for every hundred pounds of materials, he's charging £130. He would be able to tell from close monitoring of his first few jobs whether to mark up further (and hope to remain competitive) or whether to mark down a little, and fall back on trying to get more work.

We need a few potential customers to read this mate.
Too many people think what we charge is clear profit.

 

[Octopus]

We need a few potential customers to read this mate.
Too many people think what we charge is clear profit.

Not just cusomers mate, half the newbies on here don't seem to have a clue about the overheads either.

 

[Welchyboy]

well on this project i was 1 of the sparks paying the going rate to the 2nd as per sjib rates

£40 a day per spark profit ?

so i assume your on around £150 and you friend £120, so on £300 you get around £30 profit per day, on £250 you would have to take a cut on your day rate and not earn any profit.

do you pay his CIS for him?, do you have employers insurance for him?, you need to be charging for this, youd be crazy not to!

sometimes its best to either call someones bluff or just walk away!

when i employ subbies on CIS

for me and a decent mate/trainee £350+v(london £400+V)

for a spark (paid £120-£150) £180-£200+v

for a spark and a mate/trainee £300-£350 +v

For two sparks £360-£400+v

i try to aim for about £250+v a day for myself and have found a decent mate will be a better option than another sparks as long as you can adequately supervise him

how much do you think an agency charges for their sparks? bet its not far off that, and i wouldnt employ a sparks unless they were decent, not like an agency

If it was on an ongoing project with a regular contractor i may lessen my prices but i aim to make £50 per man per day,(less than £40 i would not take on the job) to cover tax, paperwork, extra insurance and time out of my day going through the job and organizing materials etc(as it really eats into your time and stops you from getting on)

I cannot understand people who work for £160 a day!?, as my average overhead as a one man band is around £10k per year which equates to about £50 per working day, and has been so well explained above by accordfire!(excellent post by the way!)

so you have to earn that BEFORE you make any wages or profit at all, so £160 per day immediately becomes £110 then tax £22, so thats £88 take home..........so that is £8.80 per hour my friends (per 10 hour day)with NO holiday/sick pay/pension etc etc, just above minimum wage!

Think about that next time you put your quotes in

I may add that im in Essex so this may not apply to all areas equally