Worked Numbers
How Much to Charge for Computer Repair, Worked From Your Own Year
How much you should charge for computer repair comes from your own year, not anyone’s price list: an hourly floor from the income and costs you need, a diagnostic fee that at least pays for the diagnosis, a flat labor price for each common job built from your own timing, and parts marked up enough to cover the ones that go back. In the illustrative example below, the floor is $71.49 a paid hour, the diagnostic fee needs $70.77 to carry a margin, and a laptop screen swap quotes at $258.11.
None of these figures are what a computer repair costs in your area. Every minute, part cost and return share belongs to one made-up tech, there to be replaced with your own job records and supplier terms.
The PC repair pricing formula
hourly floor = (income / (1 - tax share) + business costs)
/ paid hours a year
diagnostic fee = at least minutes / 60 x floor + test supplies
flat labor = (hours x floor + shop supplies) / (1 - margin)
part price = (part cost + shipping) x (1 + markup)
quote = flat labor + part price
Step 1: your hourly floor
The example tech wants $50,000 a year kept after a 25% tax set-aside, and carries $15,000 of business costs (bench space, insurance, tools, software licenses, phone). Paid hours are 28 a week for 48 weeks, bench and on-site work plus the drive to on-site calls. Waiting on parts and slow weeks take 15% of them, leaving 1,142.4 paid hours. The year needs $81,666.67, so the floor is $71.49 per paid hour. Ignore the lost hours and you would set it at $60.76.
The tech also spends 9 hours a week on quotes, ordering parts, invoicing and keeping up with new hardware, none of it billed. Only 64% of the working week is paid, and the tech keeps $28.15 per hour actually worked. The floor has to carry those hours too.
Step 2: does the diagnostic fee pay for the diagnosis?
A diagnosis and quote takes this tech 45 minutes, plus $3.00 of test supplies. At the floor that costs $56.62. The example’s $59.00 fee covers it by $2.38 and pays for 47.00 minutes at the floor, but a 20% margin needs $70.77. A fee under the cost of the diagnosis means every customer who says “no thanks” after the quote costs you money. The test for your own fee is not what anyone else charges but whether it clears your own minutes at your own floor. If your software licenses are already in the business costs above, leave them out of the per-diagnosis supplies, or they are counted twice.
Step 3: a flat-rate menu for common jobs
Each job’s hours are the tech’s own timing. Shop supplies (thermal paste, screws, cleaning) are $5.00 a job. Parts are priced separately.
| Job (example) | Your hours | Cost at the floor | Labor price at a 20% margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| A: OS reinstall and data move | 2.00 | $147.98 | $184.98 |
| B: laptop screen swap, labor | 1.00 | $76.49 | $95.61 |
| C: malware cleanup | 1.50 | $112.24 | $140.29 |
A flat price is still an hourly price underneath; it just stops the customer watching the clock. The HVAC flat rate pricing post builds a whole price book the same way.
Step 4: parts, with returns counted
The example screen costs $120.00 with $10.00 shipping, landing at $130.00. A 25% markup sells it at $162.50, a $32.50 profit. That 25% markup is only a 20.0% margin, under the 25% the tech wants, which needs a 33.3% markup; the markup vs margin chart converts both ways.
Not every part ordered gets fitted. In the tech’s records 5% go back, dead on arrival, the wrong part, or a customer who declined, and each one loses its $10.00 shipping plus a 15% restocking fee, $28.00 in all. Counted that way, each part ordered earns $29.48, not $32.50.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Job B labor and supplies (step 3) | $95.61 |
| Screen, landed $130.00, at a 25% markup | $162.50 |
| Screen swap quote | $258.11 |
Step 5: going on site
An on-site call is a 20 mile round trip at the tech’s own $0.62 a mile, 50 minutes of driving and 1.50 hours on site. At the floor, with the driving counted as paid time, the visit costs $179.21. The example charges a $40.00 trip fee plus $95.00 an hour on site, $182.50 in all, which covers the visit by $3.29. The trip fee could fall to $36.71 before the visit stops paying the floor.
The insight: is computer repair still profitable? Count the jobs
Whether computer repair is profitable is not a question about the trade. It is a count of your own jobs a month against your own costs and pay.
The example’s costs are $1,250.00 a month, and the profit before tax it wants is $5,555.56 a month. Each $150.00 job leaves $100.50 after the 30% of the ticket that is parts at cost and a 3% card fee. So:
- 13 jobs a month cover the costs.
- 68 jobs a month cover the costs and the pay.
At 40 jobs a month this example clears its costs and makes $2,770.00, which is $2,785.56 short of the pay it wants. The business works; it just does not yet pay the owner the year from step 1. The choices are more jobs, a bigger ticket per job, or a lower share lost to parts, and the arithmetic shows how far each one has to move. Your own answer depends only on your own numbers.
For the customer: repair or replace?
A repair quote often meets “should I just buy a new one?” The example customer’s alternative is a $900.00 machine plus $184.98 to set it up and move their data (job A). If the $258.11 repair adds 2 years, it costs $129.06 a year, against $217.00 a year for the new machine kept 5 years. The repair needs to last 1.19 years to break even. The years are a judgment you and the customer make together; the arithmetic only lays it out.
Did the job pay?
After the repair, check the actuals. The screen swap sold at $258.11 but took 1.50 hours against 1.00 planned. Take out a 3% card fee ($7.74), the $130.00 screen and $5.00 of supplies: $115.37 is left, or $76.91 an hour, above the $71.49 floor. Without the part’s profit, the same hours would have earned $55.24 an hour, under the floor: the markup carried the overrun. Logging actuals after every job shows which kinds of job run long.
How these were calculated
The floor is (income / (1 - tax share) + business costs) / (paid hours a week x (1 - share lost) x weeks). Diagnosis cost is minutes / 60 x floor + supplies; the fee for a margin is cost / (1 - margin). Flat labor is (hours x floor + supplies) / (1 - margin). Part price is (cost + shipping) x (1 + markup); profit per part ordered is (1 - return share) x profit on a fitted part - return share x (shipping + cost x restocking share). Jobs a month are rounded up to whole jobs. 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 builds the year week by week and adds jobs to the month one at a time, 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 your own fees, jobs and parts through the same arithmetic, the pack below has eight linked calculators.