A small job is not a cheap job
The instinct is obvious and it is wrong. A small job is quick, so it should be cheap. Somebody asks you to pop round and swap a tap, and quoting £90 for twenty minutes' work feels like taking advantage.
What a small job actually is, is a job where the unavoidable costs are a much larger share of the price.
What happens whatever the job is
Every callout, regardless of size:
- You drive there and back.
- You burn the fuel and the tyres and the van's value.
- Somebody quoted it.
- Somebody raised the invoice, and probably chased it.
- Somebody bought or collected the parts.
None of that shrinks because the job was small. It is the same forty minutes of driving whether you are there for twenty minutes or all day.
The hour on site is not the hour you are paid for
This is the number that surprises people when they work it out. A one hour job with forty minutes of travel, fifteen minutes of quoting and fifteen minutes of admin consumes two and a bit hours of your day.
Which is why your minimum charge divided by the time on the tools produces a figure far above your hourly rate, and why comparing the two is a category error. Your hourly rate is what you are paid for the hour you are holding a tool. Your minimum charge covers all the hours the job actually consumed.
Anybody who looks at the two numbers and calls the minimum expensive is comparing a rate to a price.
The mistake this page exists to catch
Somebody asks for a small job. It feels too small to put a minimum charge on, so you quote it off your hourly rate instead. Half an hour at £65 is £32.50.
Behind that £32.50 sits the travel, the fuel, the quoting, the admin and a share of your overheads, which together can easily exceed £50 before you have paid yourself for a single minute of the actual work. The job is a loss and it looks like a favour.
Do it four times a week and it is a meaningful hole in the year, made entirely out of jobs that each felt too small to worry about.
Overheads have to be in it
Rent, insurance, the van, phones, software and accountancy all have to come out of billable hours, and a small job consumes billable hours like any other. Leave them out and you get a number that looks defensible and quietly loses money on every callout.
The per-hour figure to put in comes from the job costing tool, which works it out from your annual overheads and your billable hours. Watch that one carefully in a quiet year: the rate goes up when you are less busy, which means your minimum charge should too, at exactly the moment it feels hardest to raise it.
A minimum charge is also a filter
It will cost you some work. That is half of what it is for.
A proportion of the callouts a minimum prices out were never going to be worth doing, and the day they free up is worth more than the loss. The customers who object most loudly to a minimum charge are, with some regularity, the same ones who query the invoice afterwards.
For the ones genuinely worth keeping, the honest answer is batching. Two jobs on the same street share one lot of travel, one lot of driving time, and roughly one lot of admin. That genuinely does make a small job cheap, and it is the only thing that does.
On the numbers this page starts with
The defaults are British. UK callout charges were verified in the £40 to £120 range with most trades between £60 and £100, and the mileage figure is a UK one.
The equivalents for the US, Australia and Canada were not verified, so they are not asserted. The arithmetic does not depend on any of them: put your own travel, rates and overheads in wherever you are and the sum works identically.
Common questions
Why do I need a minimum charge?
Because a small job carries exactly the same cost of turning up as a big one. The driving is the same, the fuel is the same, the quoting is the same, and so are the invoicing and the chasing. Only the time on the tools is smaller. So with £45 of travel and admin behind every callout, a £40 job has already lost money before anybody discusses margin.
What is a typical UK callout charge?
Between £40 and £120 for a standard daytime callout, with most trades landing between £60 and £100. That range is worth knowing as a sanity check rather than as a target, because it says nothing about your travel, your overheads or your area. The point of working yours out is that it comes from your own numbers rather than somebody else's average.
Why is my minimum so much higher than my hourly rate?
Because they are not the same kind of number and comparing them is the mistake. Your hourly rate is paid for the hour you are holding a tool. Your minimum charge covers the whole job, including the hour of driving, the quarter hour quoting and the quarter hour invoicing that nobody pays for separately. A one hour job can easily consume two and a half hours of your day, and the minimum is what makes that day work.
Should I just quote my hourly rate for small jobs?
That is precisely the move that loses money, and it is extremely common because a small job feels too small to put a minimum on. Half an hour on site at £65 an hour is £32.50. The travel, quoting and admin behind it can easily be £50 before you have paid for a single minute of the work itself. The tool shows this directly and it usually surprises people.
Does the minimum have to include overheads?
Yes, or it is not a minimum. Rent, insurance, the van, phones and software all have to come out of billable hours, and a small job consumes billable hours like any other. Leaving overheads out prices the job as though the business had no fixed costs, which produces a number that looks defensible and quietly loses money on every callout.
Will a minimum charge lose me work?
Some, and that is half the value rather than a side effect. A proportion of the callouts a minimum prices out were never going to be worth doing, and losing them frees the day for work that is. The ones genuinely worth keeping are usually worth batching instead: two jobs on the same street share one lot of travel, which is the only honest way to make a small job cheap.
Does this work outside the UK?
The arithmetic does, completely. Only the defaults are British: the callout range and the mileage figure were verified for the UK and the US, Australian and Canadian equivalents were not. Put your own travel, rates and overheads in wherever you are and the sum works the same, because none of it depends on a national number.