Charging for materials for job

[sandfarm]

I have been asked to make some fluted pieces that will be used to repair rotted sections of two 22' tall x 32" dia. porch columns.
I have some expensive honduras mahogany that will most likely be used for this job.
There will be considerable drop from the 3" x 12" boards.
I am guessing that there will be one drop of about 3" x 3" x 8 to 10', one drop of 1" x 9" x 8 to 10'.
How do you charge for materials?
Should I charge for the whole board or just what wood is used and leaves usable drops?
Thanks,
Joe

 

[Oka]

I charge for the wood you need to buy for the project. The excess is a requirement to assure you get the right sections of board you need, or If the excess is a result of only being able to buy say an 8 ft board because the vendor only sells boards is standard lengths from the mill, then that is part of the job cost. Further, if there is pick up time to get the material then, that also needs to be added.
Clients that want to only charge for what is exactly used/placed are not people who are I do business with.

I ll use carpet as an example: Client asks for purple patterned carpet, and wants it installed in a week. The room is 15.5' x 30.5 ft. The special color/pattern requires the contractor to go to the warehouse and wait for that special item. It takes 2 hours to do this. Further, to makes things more complicated the carpet comes in 9' wide width. And, the pattern repeats every 4 ft.
With this scenario, you would need to buy 35 ft long to get the pattern to match and seam correctly. This means you would need to buy 61sq yards of carpet even though technically, the floor is only 52.3 sq yds. The customer must pay for the extra 8.7 yds in this case, if they think they do not need to pay for all the material you have these choices:

1. Decline the job
2. Pad the number (cost of 65 yds + pick up time ÷ 52.3 yds will provide an impacted cost to correctly pay for the material or
3. Tell the customer to save mark up go and get the metal for the job and supply him a labor only price ........ then tell him if you are doing the job, you will need 65 yds purchased or you decline the job.

A good moral to live by is : it is better to be broke and fishing than to be working losing money.

 

[Graywolf]

You charge for what you had to purchase in order to do the project. Now the drop is yours to do with as you please. in this case you can consider it as part of a bonus or additional profit, either way it’s not your fault that you have to buy the additional materials. Your markup should be the same regardless. You have it in your shop you are housing and managing the material as well. That is at your cost, so you need to charge for it. You have to capture all associated costs to your jobs or you will be losing money.

 

[HITCH-]

I agree with Richard.

Also, those drops would be a usable size for a woodturner so they don't have to go to the burn pile.

 

[Henry W]

I charge for the wood you need to buy for the project.

Um - yes no doubt on this - charge for the materials you need to purchase. If customer wants to keep the extra material they 'bought' (or I bought for them), they can (I always ask, but no one has ever said yes).

If you don't your own shop will accumulate a bunch of materials that you bought, but don't necessarily need or want. If you can use them for another purpose, great, thats more profit.

I have used and billed leftover materials from customer one, on a small job for customer two; in this case I had to track and know what I had on hand - but I saved the customer 2 $$ by not needing to buy a full sized piece, and not needing to go somewhere to source materials. Note that this is not an excuse to buy a 16' piece of 8/4 premium grade material where a 3' long piece suffices - but the idea holds that customer pays for materials needed to purchase for the job.

 

[Gotcha6]

My dad had a similar experience years ago. Customer asked for price on his home and then asked for the cost/sq. ft. After he got the numbers he said to "cut 12' off the back rooms and give him credit for the cost per square foot." This was a stick built house and the framing members were ~14' long. We would have been throwing away at least 12" of lumber on every ceiling, floor joist, and rafter. Needless to say he was even more difficult as the project progressed.......

 

[holcombej]

We added a sunroom years ago and had an architect draw plans for it and a new master bedroom and bath. Sunroom was gonna be 30’ feet long X 12’ wide. He first drew plans making it 11’ wide so my question to him was: “why 11’ when I gotta buy 12’ long joists and the subfloor is in 4 X 8 multiples?”. Kinda scratched his head and said: “ I guess we can do 12’ wide”. Ya think!?

 

[Roy G]

You write about having left over wood when you cut pieces required for the job. I would charge for the whole board since most shops don't want to have to look through their pile of cut-offs for a certain size board for the next project. As a hobbyist, I can spend quite awhile looking through my stash for a piece that would work. I don't have to worry about profit margins.

Roy G