How to Price Plumbing Jobs Accurately & Profitably

Pricing plumbing work may seem straightforward on the surface, but, in our experience, there are certain details that are critical to get right to ensure your plumbing business both (a) offers competitive pricing and (b) remains profitable. For example, variables like labor rates and overhead costs; material costs and markup; the complexity of the job and your target profit margin, all need to be accounted for to strike the right balance between competitive pricing and profits. From what we’ve seen, this all starts from choosing the right pricing model. 

Typically, plumbing business owners use one of two pricing models: time and materials (hourly rates) or flat-rate pricing. There are pros and cons for each, such as justifying hourly rates to customers, or taking longer than expected to complete a flat-rate priced job. 

However, the most successful plumbing businesses use the flat-rate pricing method because customers know exactly what a plumbing job will cost and it encourages plumbers to work more efficiently (we’ll explain this in more detail below).

In this article, we’ll discuss the different pricing models and provide a guide so you can ensure you’re charging the right amount for every plumbing job and earning the full value of your plumbing services so your business can thrive.

Table of Contents

• Work out your operating costs

  • Calculate overhead expenses 

  • Divide by billable hours

• Scope out the work and specify materials

  • Determine scope of work

  • Calculate materials needed

• Calculate labor costs

  • Work out number of billable hours required

  • Calculate labor rate, factoring in variables

  • Consider using flat-rate pricing

• Plumbing cost estimator examples

  • Plumbing repair prices

  • Plumbing installation prices

• Plumbing pricing models: Flat-rate and hourly billing

  • Hybrid pricing

  • The drawbacks of hourly rates

  • The benefits of flat-rate pricing

  • The challenges of standard pricebooks

• How software can help you price plumbing jobs efficiently and profitably

We’ll also explain how our tool, ServiceTitan, which offers a customizable flat-rate pricebook, can help plumbers provide accurate estimates for every plumbing project, from installing a faucet or unblocking a clogged drain to providing emergency services or plumbing repairs like a burst pipe.

If after reading our pricing guide, you think ServiceTitan’s pricing and estimating software could help streamline your plumbing business, you can book a free, personalized demo.

Step-by-Step Guide for Pricing Plumbing Work Profitably

Whichever pricing method you use, you need an accurate assessment of your plumbing company’s costs. These fall broadly into three buckets:

1. Work out your company's operating costs 

2. Scope out the work and specify cost of materials

3. Calculate labor costs 

1. Work Out Your Operating Costs

Your operating costs include more than just time and materials. Start by calculating all of your overhead expenses each month. These might include:

• Rent

• Business equipment (computers, phones, office furniture)

• Taxes

• Licenses and certifications

• Vehicles (including maintenance, repairs, and fuel)

• Plumbing tools

• Utilities

• Insurances

• Marketing

Then, use ServiceTitan’s Labor Rate Calculator to divide your total overhead costs by your total billable hours (more on this below) to determine how much you need to charge per hour to break even or grow net profits.

[Source: Labor Rate Calculator in ServiceTitan]

2. Scope Out the Work and Specify Materials

Next, for each job you need to determine the full scope of work before you can create a plumbing estimate. This almost always means visiting the home or business in person.

Determine what materials you need by outlining the types and quantities for every plumbing component required to complete the plumbing job. Then, figure out what needs to be ordered, and where and when you can get your supplies. Don’t forget to include taxes and bear in mind any upfront costs you may need to allow for.

Plumbing prices will vary depending on the complexity of the job. Upgrading fixtures can take more time and skill and some may require electrical work so this will need to be factored into the plumbing estimate, too. 

To create a general estimate, plumbers sometimes add up the number of fixtures and multiply it by a “fixture rate.”

Inspecting every potential plumbing job is critical, as is factoring in pricing for the time spent scoping the work. 

3. Calculate Labor Costs

Calculating labor costs can be tricky if you don’t correctly factor in the number of hours that are spent on non billable tasks. 

In an average year, there are roughly 2,080 working hours and it’s obvious to most business owners that holidays, sick days, and vacations won’t be billable hours. 

But others are less cut-and-dry and will vary depending on how a plumbing company is set up, where it’s located, and other factors, such as:

• How much time do techs spend on training every year? 

• What’s the average cost of a tech’s travel time?

• How many hours do they spend in meetings, working on planning? 

• How often do they wash their trucks, and how long does each wash take?

In order to arrive at profitable prices, all of these variables have to be accounted for. As a guide, the national average of billable hours for a plumbing tech is only 40%-50% of a workday.

Here’s how you do it:

• First, calculate an estimated number of hours required to complete a job, and whether you need to hire extra labor.

• Base your labor rate on a shop average method (using labor averages in past 12 months) or job average (using average wages and crew expertise).

• Multiply the per hour labor rate by the estimated labor hours to calculate the true labor costs.

• Finally, factor in the additional costs of employee benefits, such as vacation pay, pension, insurance, and payroll tax to arrive at the final labor bill.

Hourly rates for professional plumbers

Depending on experience and location, licensed plumbers cost between $45 and $150 per hour, not including materials or additional fees.

These are the average hourly rates by job title:

• Journeyman Plumber: $75

• Master Plumber: $100

• Emergency Plumber: $150

Bear in mind that commercial plumbing services warrant a higher rate as there are specific building codes that need to be adhered to. 

Plumbing Cost Estimator Examples

The following prices are examples of the average prices plumbers charge for a selection of plumbing repairs and installations.

You’ll need to work out prices for specific jobs based on your own plumbing company’s rates, materials, overheads, and bottom line.

Plumbing Repair Prices

Plumbing Installation Prices

Plumbing Pricing Models: Flat-Rate and Hourly Billing

As we mentioned above, most licensed plumbers calculate their prices using one of two pricing models: 

• Time & Materials (Hourly Rate): Costs are based on the time spent performing the work (labor cost) and for materials used on the job (material costs).

• Flat Rate: Charges one fixed rate for a service.

Hybrid Pricing

It’s worth noting that some plumbing businesses use a hybrid pricing method, which involves using both a flat and an hourly rate to bill a customer based on the specific job at hand.

For example, you could charge a flat rate for installing a faucet since you can predict precisely how long it will take, having done it many times. The labor costs, the price for materials, and a small markup are all baked into the fixed total cost.

In contrast, you would have to charge an hourly rate for repairing a damaged main water line, which can take days to fix and may involve unforeseen complications.

This method provides flexibility, allowing you to tailor your billing method to match each job's particular requirements.

The Drawbacks of Hourly Rates

While some plumbing contractors stick with an hourly rate pricing model, based on our experience, the most successful businesses use the flat-rate pricing model. This is largely because of two drawbacks with the Time & Materials approach:  

1. Justifying hourly rates: Plumbing contractors understand that an hourly rate incorporates their pay, overhead costs and other expenses. But a charge of $200 or $300 per hour is a difficult pill for a homeowner to swallow. Without that understanding, homeowners can feel suspicious of such charges and are less likely to sign up as a customer. 

2. Encouraging poor performance: With Time & Materials pricing, plumbing techs who work slowly — whether on a plumbing repair or the installation of a new product — can run up the bill, even if they’re doing an inadequate job. Likewise, a super-fast tech who completes tasks quickly and competently, can generate less revenue for their boss. This results in lower-quality plumbing services, reputational damage, and fewer overall jobs getting completed, and directly affects profit margins. 

The Benefits of Flat-Rate Pricing

Implementing flat-rate pricing solves both of the problems we just described. With flat-rate pricing, customers know exactly what a job will cost, regardless of how long it takes, so they don’t need to clock-watch or worry about unexpected costs. Likewise, plumbers are incentivized to execute jobs efficiently, so they can tackle more jobs and bring in more revenue.

The Challenges of Standard Pricebooks

Flat-rate plumbing businesses generally use a physical flat-rate pricing book: a comprehensive document that lists everything a company buys and sells, their labor costs, job types, markups, and all of the materials and equipment used.

But these require technicians to lug around heavy binders to every sales or service call. These inevitably contain outdated information. Just putting together such a pricing guide takes hundreds of hours. 

In contrast, flat-rate pricing and estimating software gives your plumbers a better tool to use when communicating with customers that provides accurate, reliable pricing information.

However, some software-based, ready-made pricebooks require contractors to import and export data, and make frequent manual updates, and most use generic rather than specific prices for materials, requiring contractors to spend time searching for these separately.

Our modern pricebook solution gives users access to the catalogs of a range of industry suppliers so the prices reflect the actual materials that will be used for a job, rather than a generic placeholder or standard price. 

Here’s how it works.

How ServiceTitan’s Pricebook & Estimating Software Can Help You Price Plumbing Jobs Efficiently and Profitably

ServiceTitan helps plumbing professionals set and manage prices and send out estimates for plumbing jobs easily and profitably.

Key pricebook features include:

Flexible Pricebook Setup and Management

ServiceTitan’s software meets the needs of different business sizes and can scale with a growing plumbing business. 

With our three options, you can: 

1. Create a completely new pricebook from scratch

2. Import a pricebook you’re already using

3. Use our pre-built pricebook available through Pricebook Pro

Whichever you choose, you can refine your pricebook with as much detail as you’d like.

[Source: Pricebook Categories in ServiceTitan]

Accessibility is flexible too. Because it is cloud-based, everybody who needs access to the pricebook can view it in real-time via their desktop (if office based), laptop, or mobile devices (if out in the field). 

Customized Pricebook Organization

Our pricebook solution is completely customizable, so you can easily create and organize your pricebook efficiently to suit the size and complexity of your business. 

For example, you can create different pricebooks for residential and commercial customers. Or, if your business serves multiple industries (such as HVAC and electrical), you can also create industry-specific pricebooks for each and set specific access permissions.

Clear, visual organization helps your plumbers find what they need in the field. Items are automatically populated with professional-quality photos and you can upload your own photos and videos, too. Finding a specific item is straightforward, as the pricebook has a variety of searchable options, including product code, part number, model number, name, or category. 

Advanced Editing Features

Updating and editing prices is one of the challenges of managing a pricebook — particularly when price changes need to be reflected in hundreds or thousands of jobs. 

Editing a pricebook in ServiceTitan is efficient. Contractors save time by:

• Bulk Editing: Apply edits and markups on multiple services, materials, or equipment across your entire pricebook or to select groups or categories.

• Individually Editing: Edit individual services or pricebook items manually, including as many or as few details as you want.

• Creating Dynamic Price Automations: ServiceTitan’s Dynamic Pricing feature lets you set up rules that automatically update your pricing when material costs and labor rates change.

Plumbers can easily adjust any individual service or item for single jobs, or use global edits to automatically implement changes across their entire pricebook, such as discount or labor rate changes. This saves a huge amount of time. 

[Source: Edit Service Details in ServiceTitan]

And because ServiceTitan’s pricebook is integrated with the rest of your software, changes you make to your pricebook automatically extend to all other business areas, like purchase orders and invoices, and to your accounting software (such as QuickBooks or Intacct).

Updates are made across the platform in real-time so any estimates or proposals that are created will automatically reflect the most up-to-date pricing, bypassing the time lag of onerous pricing updates.

The Ability to Link to Supplier Catalogs via Pricebook Connect

ServiceTitan integrates with specific suppliers so that you can automatically keep your materials and equipment prices updated through Pricebook Connect. Supplier catalogs are linked to your pricebook so you can be notified of any changes to their prices, product description and images, or you can choose to have the changes made to your pricebook automatically. 

[Source: ServiceTitan’s Pricebook Connect: Catalogs | Desktop]

Pricebook Connect also notifies you of any upgrades or recommendations that sell well for the specific plumbing services you offer. As well as safeguarding your margins and profitability, you can keep on top of the latest products and opportunities to sell higher-ticket products as they become available. 

Additional Functionality with Pricebook Pro

ServiceTitan offers additional functionality with Pricebook Pro — a dynamic pricebook we build and maintain with the guidance of experienced industry experts. Customers who upgrade to Pricebook Pro see an average year-over-year revenue growth of about 13%. 

With Pricebook Pro, all categories and services (including hundreds of ready-made templates) are preset for you and include professional images, descriptions, sold hours, average prices, and more. You insert your labor rate, and the software automatically updates all of your flat-rate prices accordingly.

Pricebook Pro automatically pulls in the most up-to-date product photos, descriptions, and costs, and continues to automatically update that information. This ensures your estimates are accurate and saves hundreds of hours of manual edits and potential errors. 

We also suggest upgrades and other service recommendations that maximize revenue from each sale. 

Price Insights is a new ServiceTitan feature exclusive to Pricebook Pro that helps you bid with even more confidence. It compares your flat-rate price with the average ticket price for that service in your geographical area. 

Note: Pricebook Pro is also available to electrical, HVAC, drain, and sewer trades. So if you provide services in more than one field service, you’ll have access to everything in one pricebook. 

Create Multi-Option Estimates with Ease

Once you’ve set your prices, creating a plumbing estimate within ServiceTitan is quick and easy. Our software allows you to draw from your pricebook to build accurate and professional proposals that protect (and even increase) your profit margin. 

Good-Better-Best-style proposals can be created (either from scratch or customized from any of our hundreds of templates) for presenting multiple options to customers in the field. The customer can click into each option and view further details of the service, including the material images and descriptions.

[Source: Water Heater Estimates | Good, Better, Best]

ServiceTitan’s financing feature embeds a financing application in proposals that allows customers to apply for financing in just a few steps, increasing the sales opportunity and customer satisfaction at the same time.

[Source: Product Illustration | Financing: Select Plans]

Integrate Plumbing Estimates with Billing and Other Features

In addition to powering a professional, up-to-date, and easy-to-maintain pricebook, ServiceTitan integrates your plumbing pricebook with the rest of your operational process, namely estimating, invoicing, and payments. 

Once the customer has agreed to the plumbing estimate, ServiceTitan lets you:

• Generate electronic purchase orders

• Order equipment and materials

• Schedule and dispatch the work order

• Produce the plumbing invoice, send it via email to the customer, and automatically file it electronically

• Accept check or credit card payments on the spot via mobile or through the ServiceTitan portal, speeding up cash flow and reducing the need for follow-up calls

• Integrate directly with accounting tools such as Intacct and QuickBooks so you can keep everything in the same workflow.

• Connect your pricebook to data reporting so you can track every job, technician and CSR, as well as every marketing campaign.

Ready to Try ServiceTitan to Help Price Your Plumbing Jobs?

Pricing plumbing jobs accurately and profitably requires getting a lot of variables right. Flat-rate pricing and a reliable, easy-to-use plumbing pricebook are essential for helping your technicians create and close estimates confidently.

ServiceTitan’s dynamic pricebook software helps your team build accurate, profitable estimates—while saving time by seamlessly connecting to the rest of your workflow.