How Do You Work Out What to Charge for Detailing Services?
Pricing is one of the most difficult aspects when running a service business.
It’s a knife-edge balance — staying competitive, covering your real running costs, and still taking home enough to live on and reinvest. Most people get one or two of those right. Getting all three right is where a business actually grows
We’ve discussed it briefly before in our fixed costs guide and calculator article, which focused on just one aspect of this. But with costs shifting all the time, and some real confusion about how to accurately work out pricing based on actual real-world figures, we’ve put together a full pricing calculator to help you confirm if you’re at least in the right ballpark…
It does demand a lot of figures to get an accurate calculation – some of which you’ll probably have to hunt for – but with a bit of time input up front, you can quickly work out all your individual services on the basis of;
- Actual products used,
- The time and travel costs incurred,
- What you personally need to take home,
- and a variety of other considerations, such as markup percentages, VAT, and future growth funds, all crucial to the final figure.
The workbook includes separate sheets for individual services — allowing you to build a full picture of your pricing across your whole offering, not just one job type. It accounts for product costs per service, time and travel, your fixed monthly overhead and income requirements, your chemical costs per use, then works out a minimum viable price and suggested rate for each, based on the figures you input.
If your income isn’t reflecting your outgoings, you’re struggling to justify your prices, or you’re not sure where to start — download the calculator below, put your real numbers in and see where it takes you. Let us know if it helps too – or if there’s something missing.
You’ll need either Excel on your computer, or an equivalent program that works with .XLS files; such as Google Sheets, Open Office Calc, or free on the Excel online website with a basic Microsoft account. All adjustment steps in the instructions are based on Excel, so may vary with other programs.
Watching the pounds? For the options on paying for courses — including military resettlement and government schemes — see our full course funding guide.
