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.