PlumbingBossPro Blog — Quotes & Estimates

Pricing Your Plumbing Service Call Fee and Showing It on the Estimate

The service call fee is the first number a lot of customers ask about, often before they have described the problem. “How much just to come out?” How you answer that question, and how the fee appears on the estimate afterward, says a lot about how your company handles money. Customers forgive a fair fee. They do not forgive a surprise.

Where the Fee Sits in Your Service List

The fee belongs on your service list like any other service, as explained in Building a Plumbing Service List for Estimates: Service Calls, Drain Cleaning and Common Repairs. Setting it up as its own line means it lands on every estimate the same way, with the same name and the same price, no matter who builds the quote.

Many shops set up a few versions: a standard service call, an after-hours call, and sometimes a weekend or holiday call. Each one is a separate line, so the customer can see exactly which one applies.

What the Fee Is Supposed to Cover

Before picking a number, decide what the fee pays for. For most plumbing companies it covers some combination of:

• The trip. Fuel, van wear and the tech's drive time to the house.
• The diagnosis. The time it takes to find out why the water heater is not making hot water or where the leak really is.
• The slot on the schedule. A van that drives to your house is not driving to someone else's.

If you know roughly what a typical van-hour costs you to run, you can reason about whether your fee covers the trip and the first part of the diagnosis. Your accountant can help you build that number if you have not done it before. This is operator judgment, not a formula, and every market is a little different.

Three Common Ways to Handle It

Plumbing companies tend to land on one of three approaches:

• Always charged. The fee is on every visit, whether or not the customer approves a repair. Simple and predictable. Customers know the number up front.
• Credited toward approved work. The fee is charged if the customer only wants a diagnosis, but credited if they approve a repair. This rewards a yes on the spot, though it makes the estimate a little more complicated to read.
• Built into repair prices. No separate fee shows when a repair is approved, because each repair price already includes the visit. The fee only appears when the customer declines.

None of these is right for everyone. What matters is that the office, the techs and the website all describe it the same way. A customer told one thing on the phone and another in the driveway will remember the difference.

Showing the Fee on the Estimate

Whatever you choose, the estimate should make it obvious. A few habits keep it clear:

• Put it first. The service call line goes at the top of the estimate, ahead of the repair lines.
• Name it plainly. “Service call — visit and diagnosis” is better than a code.
• Show the credit if there is one. If you credit the fee toward approved work, show it as its own line so the customer sees it was applied, not quietly dropped.
• Use the same wording on the invoice. When the approved estimate becomes the job and the job becomes the invoice, the lines carry through. The customer sees the same words twice.

An example estimate might read: Service call, $89. Toilet rebuild, fill valve and flapper. Supply line replacement. Your prices, your wording.

Saying the Number Out Loud

The fee should be said before the van is dispatched, not discovered on the invoice. Give the office a short script: “Our service call is $89. That covers the visit and the diagnosis. The tech will give you a written price for any repair before starting.” That last sentence matters as much as the number, because it tells the customer they will see a quote and get to decide.

If your website request form asks people to describe the problem, it is worth showing the service call fee near the form as well, so people who request service already know it. For more on what to price over the phone and what to leave for the visit, see Quoting Over the Phone: What a Plumbing Company Should and Shouldn't Price Before the Visit.

Review It Like Any Other Price

A service call fee set years ago and never touched slowly stops covering what it was meant to cover. Look at it when you review the rest of the service list. Ask your techs whether customers push back on it, and listen to the office about how often it comes up as a reason people decline.

Changing the fee in PlumbingBossPro means changing one line on the service list. Every new estimate picks up the new price from then on. For how the service call fits into the full quoting process, see the plumbing estimate software page.