Build Your Own Price Sheet: The Six Lines That Price Every Pressure Washing Job
Build Your Own Price Sheet: The Six Lines That Price Every Pressure Washing Job
You're standing in the driveway. The lady wants to know what it runs to wash the whole house, both stories.
So you do what you always do. You look at it. You think about how long the last one like it took. You remember what you charged that guy last month. And you say four twenty-five.
She says okay.
You feel good about it right up until the end of the month, when the money isn't there.
That's not a pricing problem. It's a no-sheet problem. You've been pricing off memory because you never had a number to price off of.
Free Pressure Washer Job Costing Cheat Sheet!
What you'll have by the time you finish this
Six lines. That's the whole sheet.
Four you figure out once on a Sunday and never touch again. Two change job to job. After that, quoting is thirty seconds of math you can do in the truck.
Monday we costed a two-hour driveway. Wednesday we counted the hours you pay for and can't bill. Today it all goes on one page.
Lets build it.
Line 1 — What an hour of labor actually costs you
Start with your helper. Say you pay him $18 an hour.
He doesn't cost you $18. Add taxes and workers comp and you're about 30% on top. That's $23.40 before he's touched a hose.
Now the part that gets everybody. He isn't on a job every hour you pay him. He's driving, loading, standing under an awning while a Louisiana afternoon does its thing. About 55% of the hours you pay for are hours you can put on an invoice.
So take $23.40 and divide by 0.55.
$42.55. That's what one hour of real job time costs you.
Not eighteen. Forty-two fifty-five. Write it down.
Count your own hours the same way. If you're on the ladder, somebody has to cover it.
Line 2 — What the machine costs per hour
Your rig isn't free just because it's paid off.
An 8gpm belt-drive setup runs about $7.06 an hour once you count fuel, pump rebuilds, engine service, wear parts, the trailer, and the money to replace it someday.
Find it once. It doesn't move until you buy a different machine.
Line 3 — What the chemicals cost on this job
This one moves, so check it every month.
SH is about $4.60 a gallon here right now — pool season and wash season are the same season in Louisiana, and every pool in the state is buying what you're buying. A two-story house wash takes around 8 gallons plus a couple bucks of surfactant.
8 × $4.60 = $36.80. Add $2.50 of soap. $39.30.
One number is all you need here: what a gallon costs you this week.
Line 4 — What it costs to keep the doors open
Add up everything that goes out whether you wash a house or not.
Insurance $150. Commercial auto $175. Truck note $525. Phone and software $95. Ads and website $245. License and dues $60.
That's $1,250 a month just to exist.
Divide by how many jobs you run in an average month. Not your best month — January's insurance bill doesn't wait around for July. Call it 40 jobs.
$1,250 ÷ 40 = $31.25 a job.
Line 5 — Add it up
Crew hours × $42.55. Machine hours × $7.06. Plus chemicals. Plus $31.25.
That's what the job costs. That's the whole line.
Line 6 — Turn the cost into a price
Divide your cost by 0.7. That's your price at a 30% margin.
Want 40%? Divide by 0.6 instead.
That's the sheet. Six lines, nothing else in it.
Now lets run that $425 house wash through it
Two-story. You and your helper, three hours on site. Machine running about three of those. Eight gallons of SH.
$347.
You quoted $425.
If I'd asked what you kept, you'd have done the quick math — four twenty-five, take out the helper's fifty-four bucks, forty of chemicals, splash of gas. About three hundred and twenty.
You kept $78.
Nobody stole the difference. It went to taxes and comp on your helper, to the hours you paid for and couldn't bill, to the pump you're rebuilding in the spring, and to the insurance that shows up whether the phone rings or not.
That's the false profit narrative, and it lives inside every quote you've given off memory.
Now go one hour long
The ladder work takes longer than you thought. The back of the house is worse than it looked from the street. Four hours instead of three.
Same house. Same price on the paper. Run it again and it costs $439.
You quoted $425.
You paid $14 to wash that house.
That's how a booked-solid August turns into an empty account. Not one disaster job. Twenty jobs where the math was forty minutes off.
Both ways
Same house, same crew, same three hours. One guy knows his number. The other's going off what he charged two years ago.
$347 ÷ 0.7 = $495.
That's $70 more on the same house. Do three a week and that's $210. Between now and the time the phone slows down in October, about $2,100 — and you didn't work one extra Saturday for it.
And I know what you're thinking. "I'll lose jobs at $495." Some. Not the ones you want. The customer who walks over seventy dollars is the one who was going to nickel you on the final invoice anyway. The one who stays is paying for a trained helper and a machine that starts.
What the sheet is really for
That $148 you clear at the right price isn't spending money. It's the raise for the guy who's been with you two summers. It's the second rig, so a blown pump doesn't cancel your week. It's how you sponsor the ball team and still get home at 5:30.
You went into business for yourself to take care of people — your family, your guys and theirs, your neighbors. You can't do that off a number you pulled out of the air.
Most accounting firms will never build you this sheet. Cost per job doesn't show up on a tax return, so it isn't their problem. They'll file in April, bill you for the phone call, and never ask what an hour of your crew's time costs you. They aren't in your corner, they're in your wallet.
That's what Bergeron Bookkeeping does differently. We keep these six numbers current every month, so your sheet is still right in October — not just the Sunday you built it. Everything above is the whole method. If you'd rather not build it yourself, we already did.
Quick recap
Loaded labor is $42.55 an hour, not $18. Taxes, comp, and the hours you can't bill.
Machine-hour is $7.06. Chemicals are your gallons times today's price.
Overhead per job is monthly fixed costs ÷ an average month. $31.25.
That $425 house wash costs $347. You keep $78. One hour long and you lose $14.
Cost ÷ 0.7 = your price. On that house it's $495.
