What to Charge for a Service Call

The short version

• A trip fee pays for the drive. A diagnostic fee pays for your judgment. They are not the same thing.
• A minimum protects you from the fifteen minute job that still costs you two hours.
• Credit the fee toward the work and the objection mostly disappears.
• Publish the fee. Surprise fees generate chargebacks and one star reviews.

The service call is where most owners lose money without noticing. A customer calls, you drive across town, you look at the problem for ten minutes, and you either quote the work for free or collect a fee so small it does not cover the fuel.

There are three separate charges hiding in that visit, and knowing which one you are collecting makes the conversation easy.

The trip fee pays for the drive

The trip fee covers getting there. Fuel, the truck, the hour of the day you gave up, the job you could not take because you were in the van. It has nothing to do with what you find when you arrive.

Price it against your real driving radius. A flat fee inside your core area and a higher one outside it is simple and customers understand it immediately. It also gently steers work toward the area you want to serve.

The diagnostic fee pays for knowing what is wrong

Diagnosis is skilled work. Finding the fault in twenty minutes because you have seen it a hundred times is worth more than taking two hours to find it, not less. That is the thing owners undercharge for most consistently.

Charge for diagnosis separately from the repair. If the customer wants to take your diagnosis and call someone cheaper, they paid you for the part you did. That is a fair outcome and it happens less often than owners fear.

The minimum protects the short job

A job that takes fifteen minutes still costs you the drive, the parking, the paperwork and the slot in your day. A minimum charge says that any visit costs at least a certain amount regardless of duration.

Without a minimum, your most efficient work is your least profitable work, which is a strange way to run a business. Set the minimum at roughly what the smallest viable visit costs you, then never quote below it.

• Trip fee: covers arrival, charged regardless of outcome
• Diagnostic fee: covers finding the fault, charged when you investigate
• Minimum: the floor for any visit, no matter how short the work

Credit it toward the work and objections mostly stop

The single most effective framing is that the fee applies to the job if the customer proceeds. Now the fee is not a toll. It is a deposit on work they probably want anyway.

Say it in the booking conversation, before anyone is standing in a hallway. The fee is this much, it comes off the price if we do the repair today, and here is the earliest we can be there.

Three charges that often get collapsed into one

| Charge | What it pays for | When it applies | | --- | --- | --- | | Trip fee | Getting the van to the address | Every visit, including no repair | | Diagnostic fee | Identifying the fault | When you investigate rather than install | | Minimum charge | The floor cost of any visit | Any job priced below the floor | | Credit toward work | Turning a fee into a deposit | When the customer approves the repair |

Publish it before the van leaves

Every dispute about a service call fee traces back to the customer not hearing about it until the invoice. Put the number on your booking page, say it on the phone, and put it on the confirmation the customer receives.

A published fee filters out the price shoppers before you spend fuel on them. That is not a loss. That is the fee doing its job from your driveway.

Do this before your next job

Separate the three charges and publish them where customers book.

1. Set a trip fee for your core area and a higher one for everything outside it.
2. Price diagnosis as its own line rather than folding it into the repair.
3. Set a minimum charge at roughly what the smallest viable visit costs you to run.
4. Say in the booking conversation that the fee comes off the price if the work proceeds.
5. Put the fee on your booking page and in every appointment confirmation you send.

Common questions

Should the fee be the same everywhere in my area?

A flat fee inside your core radius and a higher one outside it is simpler to explain and it nudges work toward the area you actually want.

What if the customer refuses to pay the fee after I arrive?

That is a booking problem, not a collection problem. Confirm the fee in writing when the appointment is set, and the situation almost stops happening.

Do I charge a fee for giving an estimate on new work?

For straightforward installs, usually no. For anything requiring investigation, measurement or a design decision, yes. You are doing billable work either way.

Does a published fee scare people off?

It scares off the callers who were never going to book. The people who call anyway already accepted the number, which makes the rest of the call easier.

Keep reading

• Hourly or Flat Rate: Which One Fits Your Work
• How to Price a Service Job Without Guessing
• Invoicerus for HVAC companies
• Invoicerus for appliance repair shops

Try it on your next job

Open the job price calculator and run one real job through it. No account, no card, nothing to install. If it saves you time, the free invoice generator is the next one to try.

Invoicerus does the same work on autopilot once your services and prices are set up. Start free and bring one week of jobs with you.