Carpentry Estimating

Carpentry estimating can be very tuff but here are some ways that you could use to make it easy. I’ll cover how to figure reasonably the number of hours that you’ll work and how many of those you can plan to get paid for; which expenses you should include in your hourly rate; and how to estimate the time and expenses for a particular job so that you can profitable quote.

You should set your income goal for the year first. It may seem strange to set your income goal first but the point of this carpentry website is to also put you in control of your carpentry business. Set your intended income reasonably, but set it. If you have any questions on what’s fair and reasonable income for carpentry jobs in your area you could look up adds in magazines or newspapers that tells you how much the carpenter is charging.

Perhaps the best place to obtain information about pricing in the carpentry trade is to speak to other carpenters. You could probably tell which carpenters are making more money more than others and you should speak to the ones that are doing the most successful. On the occasions when you learn about the bids by other carpenters for jobs you are bidding, you could figure out approximately how much the other carpenters are charging for their time by working backwards

The next step for figuring the currently hourly rate for your carpentry work is to estimate as precisely as possible how much time you will spend working for a full year. This sound like a big job but it is easier than you think. Here is couple of approaches that you can use. Pick the one that easiest fits you

Review a typical three month work period of your carpentry work schedule and use that as a basis for a yearly estimate to do this check you financial, records, colander and any other records that you have identified every job that you have done in that three month period. Make a note of each job listed on your calendar, checkbook, and so on and estimate how much time you spent on each job.

Add up the hours for the three-month period and multiply by four to provide a good estimate of the number of hours you can expect to work in a full year

Also you can estimate the number of hours per week on which you get paid (billable be hours). The important words here are “work for which you get paid.” You need to look at the time that you “work “ and then take away time that you don’t get paid for start with your usual workday

A good carpentry estimate is that 70% of the workday is actual work time. That means that if you work a 50 hour week most of the time, you actual work time averages around 35 hours per week.

Here is some more info on carpentry estimating and the carpentry business.

Here is a link to my home page