A 10% discount sounds small. It is not 10% off your profit, it is 10% off your price, and the profit is what pays you. See what a discount really costs, and how much extra work you would need to win to get that profit back.
Your costs do not shrink when you drop the price, so the whole discount comes out of your profit. On a job with a 30% margin, a 10% discount wipes out a third of the profit. To earn the same profit at the lower price you would need to do 50% more jobs like it.
The price and what you keep from it.
What you are thinking of giving away.
A guide, not financial advice. Figures are estimates. It assumes your costs stay the same when the price drops, and that extra work comes at the same margin and the same price.
The materials, the labour and the van cost the same whatever you charge. So when the price drops, the whole discount is lost from the profit, not from your costs. The smaller your margin, the bigger the bite.
To earn $300 again at $200 a job you need 1.5 jobs for every one you did before. That is 50% more work, more quoting, more driving and more hours, to end up exactly where you started. Read the full thinking in What a discount really costs you.
If you discount by your whole margin, the job makes no profit at all. Go beyond it and you pay to do the work. No amount of extra volume fixes that, so the calculator tells you plainly when a discount can never be won back. Not sure of your margin? The Quote & Profit Calculator shows it job by job.
