How Much Should You Charge for a Detail? A Simple Pricing Framework
Most detailers price the same way I did when I started: look at what feels fair, maybe check what the shop down the road charges, and go with a number. That works fine until you're busy enough that you start wondering whether you're actually making money on half your jobs. You are, or you aren't, and "it feels about right" won't tell you which.
Start with your real hourly cost, not a guess
Every job has three real costs: your time, your materials, and getting there. Add those up, then decide what margin you actually want on top, and you have a price you can defend, not one you're hoping is enough.
- Labor time: how long the job actually takes, not how long you'd like it to take
- Materials: product cost per job, not per bottle: a $40 bottle of coating that does 8 cars is $5 a car
- Drive time and overhead: the miles and minutes that don't show up in "job time" but are still real cost
Where most detailers underprice
The two costs that quietly eat margin are drive time and materials creep: a ceramic coating job that calls for a $60 bottle of product instead of the $25 spray sealant, on a quote that was written assuming the cheaper one. Neither shows up as a mistake in the moment. They show up three months later as "I'm busier than ever and somehow not making more."
Build it into packages, not one-off quotes
Once you know your real cost per hour and per bottle (and what you pay your detailers per job), the fastest way to stop re-deriving a price every time is to build it into a small number of fixed packages. We run ours as tiers (a full package, a front-only option, a back-only option, and a ceramic coating add-on), so a quote is picking the right tier for the vehicle, not doing math on the driveway.
The actual pricing math doesn't change once you're running quotes and invoices through software instead of your head. It just stops leaking. Every job's price is attached to the job itself, so you're not reconstructing what you charged last time from memory. And once the price is right, getting paid by card on the spot is the last step.
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