The math already moved without you
Material’s up. Fuel’s up. Insurance did that thing it does every year. The tech you hired last spring costs more than the one before him, and your prices are sitting right where they were three seasons ago.
That’s how a healthy shop bleeds out without a single dramatic moment: a point of margin here, a point there, until one slow month you’re staring at the books wondering where the money went. It went to everybody you buy from. They raised their prices. You didn’t.
Most owners freeze on this one. The fear is real. You say a bigger number out loud, the customer walks, and now there’s a hole in the schedule that’s nobody’s fault but yours. I get it. Sitting still isn’t the safe move, though. It only feels like the safe move.
The customers you're scared of losing
Now the part that catches people off guard. The folks who bail over a price bump are, almost every time, the exact ones you’d pay money to be rid of. They shop every job. They haggle. They call you back for “warranty” work that was never warranty work, and they pay late when they pay at all. Bump your price ten percent and the bottom of your customer list peels off, and you’ll be amazed how little you miss them.
The good ones barely blink. Somebody who trusts your work and knows you show up when you said you would is not going to fire you over another forty bucks on a service call. They’re already paying more than that for the peace of mind of not having to wonder. They just don’t think about it in dollars, and neither should you when you set the number.
“The customers who leave over a price bump are almost always the exact ones you'd pay money to be rid of.
How much, and how to actually do it
Don’t overthink the percentage. For most shops something in the range of five to fifteen percent lands without much noise, depending on how far behind you’ve let things drift. Haven’t touched your prices since before the last big cost spike? You’re probably closer to the top of that range than the bottom.
Now the how, because this is where people trip. Don’t send a letter. Don’t make an announcement. Don’t apologize. You’re not asking anyone’s permission, you’re just quoting the new number the next time the phone rings. Update your price book, update your flat-rate sheet, and the new price is simply what the job costs now. Nobody who called last spring is sitting there with your old invoice, holding it up against the new one.
The version that actually goes wrong is the raise you apply unevenly, new price for some, old price for others, because you lost the thread. That’s how you wind up in a weird conversation when two neighbors compare invoices over the fence. Pick the number, change it everywhere, done.
When somebody pushes back
A few will. Not many. And the move is dead simple: don’t get defensive, and whatever you do, don’t slash the price on the spot to rescue the sale. The second you fold, you’ve taught that customer your prices are made up.
Say it plain. “Costs have gone up across the board, and this is what it takes to do the job right and stand behind it.” That’s the whole speech. You don’t owe anybody a line-item tour of your insurance premium. Most people respect a straight answer a lot more than a discount, and the ones who don’t were going to be a headache down the road anyway.
Still nervous? Raise it on new customers first. Let the new number ride a couple of months, watch the sky stay right where it is, then bring your regulars up to match. By then you’ll have the nerve, because you’ll have the proof.
Five to fifteen percent for most shops. Closer to the top if it's been a few years since your last raise.
Update the price book and flat-rate sheet once so every quote after it uses the new number.
No letter, no apology. Just quote the new price on the next call. Silence does the work.
Same number for everybody. Mixed pricing is how you end up explaining yourself over the fence.
Say costs went up, keep it short, and don't discount on the spot to save one sale.
If you're nervous, run the new price on new work for a couple months, then bring regulars up to match.
Do it once, do it clean
The mechanics matter more than people give them credit for. A price raise that lives in your head, or on a sticky note, or scattered across three different quote templates, is a price raise that quietly leaks back to the old number inside a month. You get busy. A tech quotes off the old sheet. And you’re right back where you started, wondering why the raise never showed up in the bank.
That’s the unglamorous reason to keep your pricing in one place. Change the number once, and every quote and invoice after it pulls the new number on its own, whether it’s you writing it up or the guy you hired last week. That’s a chunk of what ToolbagCRM does: your price book and flat-rate items live in a single spot, so a raise is one edit and the whole crew is quoting it by the afternoon. One flat price covers everybody on the team, too, so the software running your quotes doesn’t get pricier every time you add a truck. Founders pricing is $99/mo for your first three months, then $150/mo locked for the life of the account.
Raise the price. Change it in one place. Say it plainly when somebody asks, and don’t flinch. The shops that never raise their prices like to tell themselves they’re being loyal. Mostly they’re just going broke quietly to keep the peace, and their customers never even asked them to.