Have you actually checked your prices lately?
If your costs have risen since you last put your prices up, your margin has shrunk even though you have not changed a thing. Work out your real margin today at your current price, and the price you would need to charge to get back to where you started.
Most trades set a price once, feel comfortable with it, and leave it alone for a lot longer than they realise. Eighteen months, two years, sometimes longer. Meanwhile materials creep up, fuel creeps up, wages creep up, and the number on the quote stays exactly where it was.
Nobody decides to cut their own margin. It just happens, a little at a time, until one day the job that used to feel comfortably profitable barely feels worth doing.
The math nobody checks
Margin is profit as a share of your price. If your costs rise and your price does not move, more of that same price gets eaten by cost, so the slice left over as profit gets thinner. To get back to the margin you started with, your price roughly has to rise by the same percentage your costs did.
A worked example
Say you set your price at $600 a job 18 months ago, working to a 40% margin. Since then, your costs, materials, fuel, wages, have risen a blended 12%:
| Cost per job, back then (60% of $600) | $360 |
| Cost per job, now (+12%) | $403 |
| Profit at your current $600 price | $197 |
| Your real margin today | 33% |
| Price needed to restore 40% margin | $672 |
Nothing about the job changed. The price stayed the same number on paper. But the margin quietly slid from 40% to 33%, a real drop, even though every quote looked identical to the one before it. Getting back to $672 is not a 12% profit grab, it is standing still in real terms.
Raising prices does not have to be dramatic
A price rise that tracks genuine cost inflation is not greed, it is arithmetic. Most customers understand that costs go up everywhere and rarely blink at a modest, well-timed adjustment. The trades who run into real pushback are usually the ones who let it slide for years and then need one big, awkward jump to catch up all at once, rather than a series of small ones nobody notices.
What to do with the number
- Check at least once a year. A short annual review against your actual costs beats guessing whether "it feels about right" still holds.
- Move sooner if one cost spikes. If materials or fuel jump sharply, do not wait for the annual check to catch up.
- Apply it consistently. New quotes at the new price straight away, and a clear, fair approach for existing regular customers rather than deciding case by case.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I actually review my prices?
How much can I raise prices without losing customers?
What if my competitors have not raised prices?
Should new customers pay more than existing ones?
The takeaway
Your price is not fixed just because you have not touched it. Check it against what the job actually costs you now, not what it cost when you last set the number, and you will usually find you are due a rise you never quite got around to giving yourself.