Appliance Repair Pricing: Service Call Fee and Flat Rate, Worked

October 26, 2026 · Pricing a service business

How much an appliance repairman should charge comes from the tech’s own numbers, not a price list: an hourly floor from the year you need, a service call fee that at least pays for the visit, parts marked up enough to cover the ones that go back, and a flat rate for the repair built from your own timing. In the illustrative washer repair below, the floor is $83.65 an on-site hour, the visit costs $77.04, and the repair prices at $276.50, or $353.54 with the visit inside it if the service call fee is credited.

None of these figures are what a service call or a repair costs in your area. Every time, mileage, part cost and return share belongs to one made-up technician and is there to be replaced with your own call records and supplier terms. Nothing here is electrical, gas or safety guidance.

The appliance repair cost formula

hourly floor   = (income / (1 - tax share) + business costs)
                 / paid on-site hours a year
visit cost     = on-site hours x floor + miles x cost per mile
call fee       = at least the visit cost;
                 visit cost / (1 - margin) for a margin
part price     = (part cost + freight) x (1 + markup)
flat rate      = (repair hours x floor + supplies) / (1 - margin)
                 + part price
with the visit = flat rate + visit cost

Step 1: your hourly floor

The example tech wants $60,000 a year kept after a 25% tax set-aside, carries $26,000 of business costs (insurance, tools, meters, software, phone; vehicle running cost is charged per mile below), and books 30 hours a week on site for 48 weeks. Cancellations and customers not home take 12% of those hours, leaving 1,267.2 paid on-site hours. The year needs $106,000.00, so the floor is $83.65 per paid on-site hour. Forget the lost hours and you would set it at $73.61.

The tech also drives 10 hours a week and spends 5 on booking, ordering parts and invoicing, none of it billed. Only 59% of the working week is paid on site, and the tech keeps $27.78 per hour actually worked. Because the floor carries the driving hours, the steps below charge miles but never drive time again.

Step 2: does the service call fee pay for the visit?

A diagnosis and quote takes this tech 45 minutes on site, with a 22 mile round trip at the tech’s own $0.65 a mile.

The example’s $95.00 fee covers the $77.04 visit, $17.96 over it, but falls $1.30 short of the $96.30 that a 20% margin needs. A fee set below the visit cost means every call that ends in “no thanks” loses money, however good the repairs are. The question for your own fee is not what anyone else charges; it is whether it clears your visit cost.

Step 3: parts markup, with returns counted

A $85.00 part with $12.00 freight lands at $97.00. A 40% markup sells it at $135.80, a $38.80 profit. That 40% markup is only a 28.6% margin, under the 30% the tech wants, which needs a 42.9% markup; the markup vs margin chart converts both ways.

Not every part ordered gets fitted. In the tech’s records 10% go back, after a wrong diagnosis or a customer who declines, and each one loses its $12.00 freight plus a 15% restocking fee, $24.75 in all. Counted that way, each part ordered earns $32.45, not $38.80.

Step 4: the flat-rate repair price

The tech’s own timing for this repair, fitting the part included, is 75 minutes.

If you credit the service call fee toward the repair, quote the larger figure so the visit is still paid. The labor margin and the part profit together mean the job could run to 2.05 hours before it falls to the floor. The HVAC flat rate pricing post builds a whole price book the same way.

Step 5: the second visit for an ordered part

This repair needed the part ordered, so the tech came back. The return adds 15 minutes on site to set up again and re-test, plus the same 22 miles: $35.21 a trip. The example charges nothing for it. With 35% of 22 calls a week needing one, that is $13,014.54 a year to come from somewhere, or $12.32 on every call’s price. Either charge the trip or add the amount to each call; leaving it out means the year’s floor quietly comes up short.

The insight: a day of calls is not a day on site

A 9 hour day in the van is not 9 paid hours. At 30 minutes of driving and 75 on site, each call takes 105 minutes, so 5 calls fit in a 9 hour day, 6.25 hours on site. If 75% of calls become repairs at a $210.00 ticket and the rest pay the $95.00 fee, the day brings in $906.25, and $670.00 after the 30% of each ticket that is parts at cost. That is $107.20 per on-site hour, above the $83.65 floor. Charge every call the 22 round-trip miles from step 2 ($71.50 for the day) and it is $95.76, still above.

That is why the floor is set per paid on-site hour, not per hour worked: the drives, the no-shows and the calls that stop at a diagnosis all have to be paid by the hours you are actually at an appliance. Price a repair from the hours on the job alone, at a rate that ignores them, and the gap shows up at the end of the year.

Did the repair pay?

After the job, check the actuals. Say it sold at $353.54, but the two visits took 2.75 on-site hours against 2.25 planned. The part landed at $97.00, supplies were $8.00, miles for both visits came to $28.60, and a 3% card fee took $10.61. That leaves $209.33, or $76.12 per on-site hour, below the $83.65 floor. At the hours planned the same money would have been $93.04 an hour, so the 30 minutes over plan are what took it below. Logging actuals after every repair shows which kinds of job overrun.

How these were calculated

The floor is (income / (1 - tax share) + business costs) / (on-site hours booked a week x (1 - share lost) x weeks). Visit cost is on-site hours x floor + miles x cost per mile; the fee for a margin is visit cost / (1 - margin). Part price is (cost + freight) x (1 + markup); profit per part ordered is (1 - return share) x profit on a fitted part - return share x (freight + cost x restocking share). The flat rate is (hours x floor + supplies) / (1 - margin) + part price. A return trip is extra hours x floor + miles x cost per mile, spread over calls by the share needing one. Calls per day are rounded down to whole calls. Figures are carried from step to step as the spreadsheet shows them, to the cent. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that adds calls to the day one at a time and costs fitted and returned parts separately, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not measured rates or market prices. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own call records, parts and year, the pack below has eight linked calculators, including a repair-or-replace sheet for the customer conversation.