The Costs of An Upholstery Job
There are a lot of costs that go into every job before the upholsterer even starts working on a job. It costs money to run a business and to be there for when clients bring their jobs to us. Every job has to pay its fair share of all the expenses listed below. A client might think that a small job ought to cost only $5 or $10, (After all, it only took you 5 minutes...) Would a patient have the gall to tell a doctor "your should only charge me $5 because you only spent 5 minutes with me?"
Before a client even gets to your shop, here are some of the costs that are part of every job.
- Advertising expenses: newspaper, telephone directories, websites, etc.
- Time spent talking to clients on the phone.
- Time spent talking to client about his job when they come into the shop.
- Time spent talking to other clients who don't have their work done.
- Rental and upkeep on shop space
- Cleaning the shop
- Time spent organizing fabric samples so they are ready for the client to look at.
- Costs of vehicles
- cost of vehicle
- gas
- tires
- maintenance
- insurance
- Utilities
- cost of having a phone
- electricity
- water
- garbage collection
- Health insurance
- Bookkeeping, time making out Work Orders, entering into bookkeeping software
- Time spent making out and paying taxes
- In between jobs. The cost of each job also has to pay for the time spent in between jobs, such as when waiting for a client to come in.
When you are in the middle of a job and stop the job, move stuff out of the way, to quickly do a small job for a client, it breaks your train of thought on the job that you were previously working on. It often takes a few moments to get your mind back on what you were doing.
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