It’s easy to price the obvious parts of a job.
Labour.
Materials.
Maybe equipment hire.
But the costs that hurt your profit are often the ones that don’t look important when you're preparing the quote.
A few forgotten expenses on every job can add up to thousands of dollars across a year.
Here are 10 costs tradies commonly forget when quoting jobs.
1. Travel time
Driving to a job still uses your time.
If you spend 45 minutes getting there and another 45 minutes getting home, that's an hour and a half of your working day that can't be spent on another job.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need a separate travel charge on every quote.
But your pricing should account for the time somehow.
For jobs outside your normal service area, you might also consider:
- Extra travel time
- Fuel
- Tolls
- Parking
- Vehicle wear
A job an hour away shouldn't necessarily be priced the same as an identical job ten minutes away.
2. Trips to the supplier
It's easy to think:
"I'll just duck down and grab that."
But every supplier run costs time.
If you're missing one fitting and spend 40 minutes driving to the supplier, finding the item and returning to site, that's 40 minutes the business isn't earning from productive work.
On larger jobs, multiple supplier runs can quickly become several hours.
Planning materials properly helps, but your quotes should still allow for realistic purchasing and collection time.
3. Small consumables
Big-ticket materials usually make it onto the quote.
Small items often don't.
Things like:
- Screws
- Fixings
- Adhesives
- Sealants
- Blades
- Drill bits
- Sandpaper
- Cleaning products
- Tape
- Rags
- Disposable protective equipment
A few dollars here and there doesn't seem like much.
But across dozens of jobs, these costs can become significant.
4. Waste disposal
Getting rid of rubbish isn't free.
Depending on the job, you might need to account for:
- Tip fees
- Skip bins
- Waste bags
- Trailer use
- Fuel
- Time loading waste
- Time travelling to disposal facilities
If you've allowed two hours to complete the work but another hour is spent cleaning up and taking rubbish away, that time needs to be accounted for somewhere.
5. Parking and tolls
This is particularly easy to overlook when quoting jobs in busy or built-up areas.
A day's parking can sometimes cost more than expected.
You may also pass through several toll roads travelling to and from site.
One job might only involve $20 or $30 in additional costs.
But if that happens repeatedly, it can eat away at your margin.
6. Equipment and tool wear
Your tools don't last forever.
Blades become blunt.
Batteries eventually fail.
Equipment needs servicing.
Tools break.
You may not add a separate "tool wear" line to a customer's quote, but the rates you charge should contribute towards replacing and maintaining the equipment required to run the business.
Otherwise you're effectively paying for new tools out of your own pocket every time something fails.
7. Administration time
The job doesn't start when you arrive on site.
There's work before and after it.
You might spend time:
- Taking the initial enquiry
- Visiting the site
- Preparing the quote
- Ordering materials
- Sending emails
- Answering customer questions
- Scheduling the job
- Preparing invoices
- Following up payment
None of that time appears in the finished result.
But it still takes time to do.
If you're spending several unpaid hours managing every job, your pricing needs to support that administration time.
8. Delivery and freight
Supplier delivery costs can be easy to miss.
Especially when you're quoting quickly and only looking at the price of the materials.
A product might cost $500, but once delivery is added the real cost to your business could be $550 or more.
For special-order products, freight can be even higher.
Always check whether the supplier price you're using includes delivery before sending the quote.
9. Time lost to unexpected delays
Not every delay is the customer's fault.
Sometimes the job simply takes longer than expected.
You could be waiting for:
- Site access
- Another trade
- Materials
- Equipment
- Deliveries
- Weather to improve
- A customer decision
You can't predict every problem.
But if every quote assumes absolutely everything will go perfectly, you'll probably underestimate labour regularly.
Experienced quoting usually includes some allowance for the reality of working on site.
10. Running the business
This is the biggest one.
Your quote needs to help pay for more than the job sitting in front of you.
Your business may also have expenses such as:
- Insurance
- Vehicle registration
- Licences
- Accounting
- Software
- Phones
- Advertising
- Website costs
- Bank fees
- Workwear
- Training
- Equipment servicing
These costs don't belong to one particular job.
But every job needs to contribute towards paying them.
If you only charge for labour and materials, you may be covering the work without properly covering the business.
A cheap quote can become an expensive job
Imagine you quote a small job for $1,200.
You calculate:
Materials: $450
Labour: $500
That leaves $250.
At first glance, it might look like you've made $250.
But then add:
Fuel: $25
Parking: $20
Waste disposal: $35
Consumables: $30
Supplier collection: $40 worth of time
Administration: $50 worth of time
Suddenly that $250 has almost disappeared.
And that's before considering your general business overheads.
This is why knowing the total price of a job isn't enough.
You need to understand what the job actually costs your business.
Build these costs into your quoting process
You don't need to show customers dozens of tiny charges.
In many cases, that would make the quote harder to understand.
Instead, build these expenses into the way you calculate your pricing.
You might include some costs within:
- Your labour rate
- Material markup
- Call-out charges
- Travel charges
- Disposal fees
- Job-specific allowances
The important thing is that they're accounted for somewhere.
Review completed jobs
One of the best ways to improve your quotes is to compare them with what actually happened.
After a job, ask:
- Did labour take longer than expected?
- Were there extra supplier runs?
- Did materials cost more?
- Did you forget disposal?
- Was travel longer than expected?
- Did the job make the profit you expected?
Those answers can make your next quote more accurate.
Better quoting isn't about charging customers for everything
It's about understanding what it really costs to complete the work.
A profitable trade business needs to recover the cost of the job, the cost of running the business and still leave enough margin for the business to grow.
The more accurately you understand those costs, the less likely you are to finish a busy week wondering where all the money went.
Jirvo helps Australian tradies quote with a clearer picture of labour, materials and job costs — without turning quoting into another job after work.