Pricing Method

Price from what this owner has actually charged. Not from a general estimate, not from an industry average, and never from a plausible-sounding number.

The owner can sanity-check a price in ten seconds if they can see what it was based on. They cannot check a number that appeared from nowhere, so they rebuild the whole thing by hand — which is the work this skill was supposed to remove.

The method

1. Find comparable jobs.

Pull past invoices and proposals for similar work:

• The connected ledger's invoices with line detail (MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books) — what was actually billed, which is what makes them comparable
• A payments connector's charge history by customer (PayPal, Square, or Stripe) when no ledger is connected — totals only, so the line arithmetic has to come from the owner
• Past proposals in Drive or M365
• An uploaded price list or rate card
• Anything the owner pastes in

A good comparable matches on type of work, rough scale, and customer type. Two or three is plenty. One is thin but usable if it is close.

2. Build from the comparable, adjust for difference.

State the arithmetic:

Comparable: Fairmount Commercial, Mar 2026 — 4 rooftop units, same scope.
            USD 14,200 total, USD 3,550 per unit.

This job:   5 units, one on a lower roof with harder access.
            5 x USD 3,550 = USD 17,750
            + USD 900 access allowance for the lower roof unit
            = USD 18,650

The owner reads that and either agrees or adjusts one number. That is the whole point.

3. Check it against the rate card, if one exists.

If the derived price is more than about 15% away from the rate card, say so and explain which you used and why. A silent discrepancy is how a shop ends up with two different prices in the market.

When there is no comparable

Do not invent one. Leave a placeholder, be specific about what is needed, and build the rest of the proposal around it:

Line 3 — Controls integration:  $______

I have no comparable for controls work in your history and no rate card entry.
Everything else is priced and ready. Give me a number for this line and the
proposal is done.

That is a five-second ask. A fabricated USD 4,200 is a number the owner has to notice, distrust, and replace — and might not catch.

What must never be invented

Structuring the price

Break it into lines the customer understands. A single number invites a single objection. Four lines invite a conversation about scope, which is a better conversation.

But do not itemize down to fasteners. Lines should map to things the customer recognizes as decisions:

Good:
  Equipment — 5 rooftop units, installed          USD 14,800
  Electrical and controls                          USD 2,100
  Roof access allowance, lower unit                  USD 900
  Permit and inspection                              USD 850
                                                  --------
  Total                                            USD 18,650

Bad:
  Materials                                       USD 11,240
  Labor                                            USD 7,410

The good version lets a customer cut the access allowance or supply their own permit. The bad version lets them only say "too expensive."

Options, when they help

Two or three tiers work well when the customer's budget is unclear. More than three is paralysis.

Anchor with the recommended option, and say which it is and why in one line. An unlabeled menu makes the customer do the owner's job.

Never present an option the owner would not actually want to do. A cheap tier that produces a bad outcome damages them when the customer picks it.

Terms

Pull the owner's standard terms from past proposals rather than inventing them. If none exist, use conservative defaults and flag them for confirmation:

• Deposit: 30% to 50% for material-heavy work, less for pure labor
• Payment: net 15 or net 30, matched to what their invoices already say
• Validity: 30 days, or shorter when material prices are moving
• Change orders: written approval before work proceeds

Flag terms weaker than their usual. If their standard is 50% deposit and this proposal says 25%, that is worth saying out loud before it goes to the customer.

Recording the outcome

After a proposal is sent, record what happened — won, lost, or no response — with the final price and the reason if known.

Won proposals become tomorrow's comparables. Lost ones are just as valuable: knowing that USD 18,650 lost the Ridgeline job to a competitor at USD 16,000 is the only way the next quote gets sharper. Nothing else in the plugin captures that, and owners almost never track it themselves.