How To Price Electrical Jobs In Australia (Without Undercharging)

If you’ve spent any time on the tools, you’ve probably priced a job, won it, finished it, and then wondered where the profit went. You’re not alone. Most Australian electricians never learned how to price jobs properly. The system most sparkies use is best described as “the rough number I had in mind, give or take.”

This article gives you a practical pricing system you can apply on the next quote you do. It’s the same one taught inside the Electrical Estimating Course.

Step 1. Know your real cost-to-operate

Before you can price anything, you need to know what an hour of your business actually costs to run. Not just wages. Every overhead that has to be covered by billable work.

That means:

• Your owner take-home (the wage you want to pay yourself)
• Super on top of that
• Vehicle costs: lease/loan, fuel, rego, insurance, servicing
• Insurances: public liability, tools, income protection
• Software and subscriptions
• Accounting, phone, marketing, training
• Tools and consumables

Add it up. Divide by the number of billable hours you actually get in a year (be realistic, quoting and admin don’t count). That’s your cost per billable hour. You can run yours through the Hourly Rate Calculator in about two minutes.

Step 2. Add a margin, then a markup

Here’s where most sparkies trip up. Markup and margin are not the same thing. A 30% markup is a 23% margin. If you wanted a 30% margin, you’d need to add 43% to your cost.

The maths:

• Sell price = Cost ÷ (1 − target margin)
• A $1,000 job at 30% target margin = $1,000 ÷ 0.7 = $1,428
• A $1,000 job marked up 30% = $1,300, which is only a 23% margin

The difference compounds across hundreds of quotes a year. Run the numbers on a real job in the Markup Calculator and you’ll see it.

Step 3. Materials with breathing room

Wholesaler pricing moves. Your quote template should price materials with a sensible margin on top, and you should refresh the pricing at least quarterly.

Don’t price materials at cost. You’re carrying the inventory risk, the procurement time, the warranty admin, and the credit terms. A 15-25% margin on materials is standard across the industry.

Step 4. Handle variations cleanly

This is where margin disappears most often. “While you’re here” extras get done, get forgotten, never make it onto the invoice.

Build a habit: every variation gets logged the moment it happens. In a notebook, in the app, on the customer’s quote, whatever. But it gets logged.

TradieTally handles this as first-class workflow. Variations attach to the original quote, get priced, get approved, get billed.

Step 5. Present the price like a professional

Most quotes lose because of presentation, not price. A clean scope, clear pricing, professional document, fast turnaround. Customers pick up on it.

Send it within 24 hours. Follow up. Don’t negotiate yourself broke.

The system, in one paragraph

Cost-to-operate gives you your hourly rate. Margin gives you your sell price. Materials carry their own margin. Variations get logged. Presentation builds trust. Follow up closes the job.

That’s the system. The Electrical Estimating Course walks through each of these in detail with real Australian examples, and you can apply the whole thing inside TradieTally once you’ve got the method locked in.

Pricing isn’t a confidence game. It’s a maths question. The maths doesn’t change.

Run your numbers through the Profit Leak Calculator if you want to see what undercharging is costing you over a year. Most sparkies are shocked.