Mon Dieux!
This is not rocket science. You are selling time.
It's pointless getting someone else's spreadsheet with their figures / costs in when you perhaps live in ....... London and have congestion charges, higher parking fees, more difficulty placing skips - licenses, whatever whereas Ian R. lives in Gods country where mileages are probably more important to him.
Use a standard costing sheet so you list what you think the job is going to cost you. When you have done the job, do the 'actual' so you can see where you scored / lost in the various expenses you built in, then keep a track of the individual types of jobs. Within a few months you will have worked out a standard ball park hourly rate you must charge for a variety of different jobs of the type you regularly do, based on YOUR facts.
This way you can 'eye-ball' jobs and get a good idea of their worth immediately and are able to give accurate verbal quotes so you can either win the job immediately or gauge the customer reaction.
The mistake most smaller businesses make is to not cost their own time and effort. There is a programme on the TV each Tuesday at 20.00 where one of the Fortes - a family member from a hotel chain started by an Italian immigrant who built a mega business visits a small business in trouble - watch it. It's based on an earlier programme called the Troubleshooter from yonks ago and it is still so relevant for anyone running a small family or 'mom and pop' family business.
If anyone wants a one-off job costing sheet e-mail
shaun.causer@newlifecleaning.com Give me a day or so and I will add notes for each line of the spreadsheet so YOU can add your own costs but more importantly know why.
If anyone can walk the talk and come back to me in 6 months with a pile of costing sheets PLUS their actuals and tell me they have learned something (for free Graham from Pest-Pro 'cos that's what the forum is about!) I will donate one hundred quid to the eye savers charity.
I would also remind everyone in this thread that there is probably already stuff like this in the previous questions / forms bit of the forum.
When you really get into costing properly and have a labour force you have to keep employed thats when it gets interesting as its like being a market trader. Again you are selling hours not bananas but you don't want to be left with stock you are paying for at the end of the day, so your prices need to go up and down accordingly. Better to have your costs covered and no profit than paying for staff to sit on their ar*se* and not be doing paid work but that's for another thread ;-)
Call my bluff?
Phil D