[ian harper]

Has anyone seen any quoted numbers on what our sector should expect when it comes to the profit - operating costs ratios?

example: operating costs 60% profit 40%

its hard to know if you have a good one or not when you only have your own numbers to go by.

[Craigp]

Good Topic.

I recall Robert Saunders teaching us about the cost of carpet cleaning, of course we all thinks it's free to us as it's our time a few pence on chems..

The best way to work it out is say your yearly espenses were £15k divide that by lets say you do 350 jobs a year.

= £42 per job.

So £42 is you break even on every job, with that information I would say min order should be around £75 +

I know that does not quite answer your question.. but it's all I have  

[Craigp]

PS I think you should be looking at more like 20% expenses 80% profit (pre tax)

[Ian Gourlay]

Craig I think expenses would be more than 20% I realize with the internet many guys are not spending on advertising , but I still think it makes sense to spend £20 to get £100 back. So that's 20% to start with, then in an ideal world we should all replace are vans and equipment on a regular basis

[Len Gribble]

Think the bloke (mr 10% he was called) who ran rentokil look at 10% profit and growth of 20% pa 

[wynne jones]

The fast track approch was make as little profit as you can get by on because you put as much as possible into marketing so your business grows like cancer.

[mark_roberts]

Year on year costs are around 30% of turnover.

I could easily lessen this but then Id have to work harder.

Mark

[ian harper]

this number has what i call some magic to it. Microsoft lost a massive part of the operation systems market but trebled their profit. Or like the supermarkets they need to keep expanding to maintain profits

I found this example

http://smbtn.com/bizratios/