If your business was losing money, would you simply conclude that you need to raise prices and do so by some arbitrary amount? Or, would you sit down, analyze your finances, and determine a specific cause for the loss?
In other words, would you just take a wild guess or would you approach the problem scientifically?
Unfortunately, many contractors take the guessing route.
Are you charging enough?
Certainly, not charging enough is a primary cause for contractors to lose money. But that fact alone does not tell us why a contractor isn’t charging more for his service. Perhaps he doesn’t know his true costs and isn’t recovering his overhead and labor burden. Perhaps jobs take longer than he expects. Perhaps it’s a combination.
But he won’t know if he simply guesses.
While guessing may be fun at a carnival, it seldom is an effective business strategy. This is true whether you are trying to determine what you should charge for labor or whether you are trying to determine how long a job will take.
To make accurate decisions, you must approach each aspect of your business scientifically, and this is particularly true of estimating.
Breaking it down
If you are estimating a simple job, such as a single bedroom, you might be able to accurately guess how long it will take. There are few substrates and other issues to consider. A small error won’t be financially catastrophic. But what happens when you are estimating a complete repaint of a 3,000 square foot house? The number of substrates, preparation and access issues, and other considerations rises significantly. A few errors could have a significant financial impact.
You wouldn’t paint this house in one fell swoop. You would approach it in a systematic manner–remove or cover furniture, prep the surfaces, paint, and then put things back. You would follow a series of steps to complete the job.
The same approach should be used for estimating
All things being equal, a painter should complete a specific task in the same amount of time, whether he is working at Mr. Brown’s or working at Mrs. Green’s house. If you know that time, then estimating becomes nothing more than a process of identifying which tasks must be completed and how much of that task is involved.
Of course, all things are seldom equal. Preparation will vary and access will be different. Surface textures will vary and other variables will come into consideration. But we can attach numbers to these variables, just as we can count the number of doors or windows.
Just as we attach a number of our financial activities–we identify how much of each expense occurs–we can attach a number to our production activities. By doing so, our estimating can become as scientific and objective as our finances.
In this regard, I am proud to announce Estimating PaintJobs.com, a new project dedicated to helping contractors develop an estimating system.