Stop 4 of 9 · Weekly
The price book as a system
Every job type carries a loaded cost and a target margin band, the weekly read shows where the band broke, and the quarterly update is a proposal Sam signs.
From a list of numbers to a system
At four trucks the price book was a list, and Sam could remember which lines were thin. At fifteen, across plumbing and HVAC, nobody can. A price book becomes a system when every job type carries four things instead of one.
| What each job type carries | Example, water heater replacement |
|---|---|
| Loaded labor hours | 3.5 hours at the loaded rate, not the wage |
| Material and equipment cost | Unit, expansion tank, fittings, permit |
| Target gross margin band | 52 to 58 percent |
| Good, better, best scope | What is in each of the three, in writing |
Loaded means the rate that carries the truck, the insurance, the phone that got answered and the hour Rosa spent scheduling it. If the model uses the wage, every band in the book is wrong in the same direction and nobody can see it.
The weekly read
[upload last week's ServiceTitan invoiced jobs export and the QuickBooks cost of goods sold detail for the same week] Join these by job type and give me one table: jobs, revenue, material cost, loaded labor cost using my price book hours, gross margin dollars and gross margin percent. Sort by margin dollars. Then flag every job type outside its target band in my price book file, and for each one say whether the cause looks like price, material cost or hours, and what row makes you say so. Say where you are unsure.
The flag Sam acts on is not the low margin percent. It is the job type where booked duration and actual duration have drifted apart, because that one has been quietly wrong on every quote for months.
Compare quoted amount to invoiced amount on last month's completed jobs by job type. Show the average spread, the ten largest gaps, and which technicians and which job types the gaps cluster in. Do not name pay or performance conclusions, just the spread and where it sits.
The quarterly update
Supplier letters arrive all quarter and get read in March. Once a quarter Sam drops the lot into the Project and gets a proposal back.
[upload the supplier price change letters received this quarter and my current price book] Map every changed SKU to the job types that use it. For each affected job type show current price, new material cost, resulting margin, and the price that would restore the target band. Give me three columns of options: hold the price, restore the band, and a middle number with the reasoning. Flag any job type where restoring the band puts us more than 15 percent above what we charged in January, because that is the one customers notice. Propose only. I set the prices.
Sam sets the numbers in the price book file and in ServiceTitan, logs the change with the date, and the good, better, best sheet gets rebuilt from the new numbers before anyone talks to a homeowner.
Good, better, best at the door
Take the water heater replacement scope from my price book and write the three options a tech reads at the door. Rules: the middle option is the one we expect people to pick, so it carries the warranty line and the expansion tank. The good option is genuinely fine, not a trap. The best option adds something a homeowner can actually feel. Under 60 words each, no pressure language, no discount offered.