What Should You Charge, Self Employed Electrician

I wouldn't get out of bed for more than £200 an hour!

Some sparkles I swear, live in a dream world. I have never been able to charge any customer more than £80 an hour.

That was a specialised job out of hours too.

You can put in a quote for an extortionate amount per hour, but this is another factor that will put you at the back of the queue if there's a few electricians quoting for the same job.

So how much should you charge in 2024 as a fully qualified electrician?

Stick around until the end for the free hourly rate calculator.

Tool Box Talk For Electricians - helping electricians reduce stress, gain back time and earn more money.

Hello and welcome back once again to tool box talk for electricians, I'm your host Ben Poulter.

Every electrician charges a different price for their work.

For a number of reasons.

And this all comes with experience with running your own business as an electrician.

A freshly qualified electrician who is about to start up on their own will struggle to set their hourly rate at £60 per hour.

However this is the whole reason they retrained to be an electrician, this is what they have been told by other electricians.

Then when their newly established business isn't winning any quotes or getting any work, that when they give up and go be employed for £25 per hour.

Like anything in life, things take time.

Many people believe that the first year of a new business should run at a loss to build a reputation and a customer base.

Scrap that, if your electrical business doesn't make a profit in the first few jobs, there's something going wrong and you need to fix it asap.

There's another mistake electricians make when starting up on their own - not charging enough.

Replacing a light, or changing a socket for £20.

YOU CANNOT MAKE GOOD MONEY DOING THIS!

By the time you have travelled to the property after answering the call, got all your kit out, done the job and tested it properly - You're going to be at a loss.

If you compare it to a job where you stack shelves in a supermarket with no qualifications, you would probably be better off.

Being cheap gives you a reputation too.” I know a cheap electrician” people will say.

You don't want to be known as cheap, you want to be known as good.

I did a bathroom recently where a customer asked me to do the electrics. I have known them for years so I didn't give them a quote, they just said get on and do it.

LED Downlights

LED Track in the shelves

Extractor fan with isolator

Mirror supply

When the job came to an end and the bathroom fitter, plasterer, tiler and plumber had all finished - the customers said they were worried what my bill was going to be out of everyone.

So I ran through everything I had done, and said - Yeah you should be.

Customers don't care what it costs, they care it's done properly and safely. Those are the types of customers you will be friends with for years.

Getting to know a customer through doing a good job, that is what you want to be known for.

In order to work out how much you should charge for an hourly rate can be simply done by figuring out your outgoing.

Your costs to run the business in the first place.

Then of course how much you want to earn a year. It's got to be at least £30k, even when starting out.

Anything less, you may as well get a job.

30k may sound quite low for an electrician, but if you plan to put the hourly rate up in the future, it's better to have some customers first.

With all the outgoings at 30k a year you would need to charge an hourly rate of £21.92, now that is nothing for a qualified electrician.

Would go as far to say it's cheap!

But if it's a starting point you're comfortable with, you could do it.

All you need to do is build on the reputation and your build your customers up.

Use existing customers to get more customers with reviews and referrals.

Then you will be faced with a better problem - too much work to do.

That's when the prices go up.

Still too busy, the prices go up once again. What's the point in being mega busy all the time?

The more your business grows, the money grows with it.

The better discounts you get in front of the wholesalers too.

I have done a quote before and a customer asked how much I get the decorative sockets for.

I said £11.30 each. Now get them for £9.42 - but with the 20% on top for materials it came to £11.30.

I'm going to get the sockets myself, the customer said. They must have gone on amazon and seen them for £15 each, because it didn't take him long to come back and ask me to get them.

The 20% on materials is not electricians being greedy - it's to cover the warranty of the product.

The time it takes to order and source the products.

I could have just charged the customer £15, the same as they are on amazon - but because I spend over 10k a year with the wholesalers - they give me a better deal.

That saving gets passed on to the customer too.

It's a business we are running after all, it's there to make money.

If you don't make a profit, that customer is not going to be able to call you to do a fantastic job the next time, they will have to either call someone else and pay more, or get a DIY dave in to burn the house down.

I wouldn't say that every job I do gets the same hourly rate.

Take rewire of a 3 bed property for example. If that house is empty you can get in and out within a week.

Then if the property is being lived in and you need to leave power on over night for the family to make dinner and play on the x box.

That job is going to take twice as long!

So much so that you may want to price yourself to not win the job.

But in my experience, if you make a good impression on the customer it doesn't matter what price you put in - they want you to do it.

So just make sure the hourly rate includes moving all the furniture around and get someone to clear up.

Don't ruin the electrician's reputation and do it yourself!

So to conclude this podcast -

When starting up on your own in your own business, figure out what your happy to charge.

Take everything into consideration.

Don't work at a loss, not as an electrician.

Maybe restaurants do this, but not people in the electrical trade, or any trade i wouldnt of thought.

Check the show notes for the FREE Hourly rate calculator.

Just because it comes out as £21 an hour, doesn't mean that's what you charge, that's the minimum you charge.

To be honest, the busier you get - sky's the limit in some specialised electrical jobs.

Until next time.