How to Build a Flat-Rate Price Book, Step by Step

What one entry holds

Simpro, a software vendor, lists six parts to a price-book entry: the task name, a description of what's included and what isn't, the estimated labor hours, a material allowance, the flat price, and a margin floor, meaning the lowest price at which the task still covers its cost. Workiz, another vendor, adds a task code and a list of the standard parts each task allows. To match the site's flat-rate calculator, add two more fields: the callback allowance and the rounding step.

The hours, parts, markup and allowance are examples, not figures for any real task.

Build it in this order

1. List the tasks you actually sell. Pull a year of invoices and count how often each job shows up. Start with the most frequent. Simpro suggests a first pass of your 20 to 30 most common jobs, with edge cases such as slab-leak detection and complex repipes left for later. Open-ended work can stay on time and materials; the flat rate vs time and materials guide shows where that line falls.
2. Write the scope and give it a code. Keep one task per entry and combine tasks on the quote. Simpro's example splits a water heater replacement into three tasks: remove and haul the old unit, install the new one, and test and inspect.
3. Set standard hours from your own tickets. Average the on-site hours for that task, then compare the average with the median and the slow jobs. Simpro also suggests a tech test: could a less experienced tech finish in that time? If not, Simpro says to widen the hours or create a separate rate tier.
4. Multiply by your billable rate. Use the rate from the labor rate calculator, which already carries labor burden, overhead, the truck and net profit. Simpro's published formula adds an overhead allocation on top of a fully loaded rate; if your rate already contains overhead, skip that line or you'll count overhead twice. The example rate assumes 65% of worked hours are billable, a figure from a sample of 300 HVAC companies by Field Promax, a software vendor, reported by ACHR News, not a measured figure for your shop. The sample measured 65% of paid time; applying it to worked hours gives fewer billable hours and a higher rate.
5. Add parts at today's cost plus your markup. Use your supplier's invoice cost, including any sales tax you pay as the consumer of materials. Whether you pay it that way depends on your state and your contract, so ask your state revenue department or accountant. In the example, $85 × 1.50 = $127.50. The markup is your decision; how much to mark up plumbing parts compares the common methods.
6. Add a callback allowance. Base it on your own return records: callback rate × (average callback cost ÷ average ticket); what a callback costs works an example. The calculator's default is 0%, because no typical rate was found for the trades. In the example, 2% of the $315.30 subtotal is $6.31.
7. Round up and record the margin floor. $187.80 of labor + $127.50 of parts + $6.31 of allowance = $321.61, rounded up to $322. The margin floor is the full cost of the task, plus the allowance: (1.5 × $112.68 + $85) × 1.02 = $259.10, where $112.68 is the example shop's full cost per billable hour. At $322, the entry earns a 19.53% net margin on full cost.

Tiers built from the same entry

Every tier should start from the base entry, so a change in hours, parts or rate flows through all of them.

• After hours. Multiply the whole price. At 1.5 (an example), $321.61 becomes $482.41, or $485 rounded up to the next $5. The multiplier is your pricing choice, and the same rule applies to it as to the base price: write it into the entry so every tech quotes the same number.
• Members. Housecall Pro's flat-rate template includes fields for membership status and a member discount. A 10% member discount (an example) takes the $322 price to $289.80, and the net margin drops from 19.53% to 10.59%. A discount comes straight out of profit. On this entry, any discount above 19.53% goes below the margin floor.
• Options. Workiz and Simpro both describe good, better and best presentations, and Simpro's water heater example is a standard tank, a high-efficiency tank and a tankless unit. Build each option as its own entry with its own parts and hours. Don't set the better price as a percentage of the good one.

Keep it current

A price book drifts the day you print it. Three things move, and each needs its own check.

Parts. The Producer Price Index measures the average change in selling prices received by domestic producers. The BLS index for plumbing fixtures and fittings went from 352.799 in April 2025 to 379.752 in April 2026, a rise of 7.64%.

That tracks producer prices, not what your supply house charges you, but it shows the direction.

If the example's $85 parts allowance had moved by the same 7.64%, it would be $91.49. Re-priced, the task comes to $331.54, or $332. Left at $322, its net margin slips from 19.53% to 17.48%.

Hours. Compare actual against standard hours for each task on a set schedule, every quarter for example. Fix the entries that drift, and look at why: a new product, a new tech, or a scope that grew.

Your rate. Recompute it when wages, payroll costs, insurance, overhead or billable hours change. Keep the rate in one cell and compute every price from it, so one change updates the whole book. How to raise your prices covers rolling a new rate out to customers.

Vendors don't agree on how often to review. Simpro calls quarterly reviews the minimum and suggests updating any item whose cost moves more than 5%. Workiz suggests a review twice a year. Pick a schedule you will keep, and write down the date of each review.

Spreadsheet or software

A spreadsheet with the fields above is enough to start: one row per task, the rate and the allowance in their own cells, prices computed from them. The weak spot is versions. Simpro points out that once several trucks quote from a shared file, keeping every tech on the current copy gets hard. Software is one fix, and in some products the feature depends on the plan.

As of October 4, 2026, Housecall Pro's pricing page lists a price book on its entry Basic plan but flat-rate pricing only from the Essentials plan up. Workiz lists a price book on all three of its plans but flat rate only on Ultimate, its top plan.

Plan prices and what else each plan includes are in the software comparison for small plumbing shops.

Some products come with pre-built task libraries; Simpro, for example, says it integrates FlatRateNOW's library of more than 1,900 tasks. Those times were set for other shops. Check them against your own tickets before you quote from them.

Next step

Price your first entry in the flat-rate price calculator: standard hours, hourly rate, parts cost, markup and allowance. Copy the price, the after-hours price and the net margin into your book, then do the next task on your list.