The price book is where your pricing decisions turn into what a customer actually pays. Every flat rate, every option and every member discount comes out of it. If it's wrong, every estimate built from it is wrong in the same direction.
A price book in plain English
Without a price book, a water heater flush costs whatever the tech on that day decides. One quotes $149, another $225, and the customer who talks to a neighbor calls the office upset. With a price book, the item reads "Flush and inspect tank water heater: $189, member $169," with a two-line description the customer can read on the tech's screen. Every tech quotes the same thing.
What goes in a price book?
| Item type | What it is | Example (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Service (task) | A repair or maintenance job at a flat price | Replace run capacitor, $280 |
| Material | A part with cost and selling price | 45/5 MFD capacitor, cost $40, sells $100 |
| Equipment | A system or unit for replacements | 3-ton heat pump condenser |
| Kit | Materials bundled for a common task | Water heater install kit: flex lines, valve, fittings |
| Fee | Service call, after-hours, trip charges | Diagnostic visit |
Each item needs a code, a customer-facing name, a plain description, a category techs can browse, a cost, a price and, if you sell memberships, a member price.
How to structure it
Organize categories the way techs think on site (electrical, refrigerant, airflow, drains, water heaters), not the way your supplier's catalog is organized. Keep names short and searchable. Write descriptions for the homeowner, because they'll read them on the estimate.
How do you price items in a price book?
- 1
Set your hourly rate
Loaded labor cost plus overhead per billable hour plus profit. This number drives every task price.
- 2
Set task times
A realistic time for a competent tech, including setup and cleanup. Check them against real jobs.
- 3
Set material markups
Usually a sliding scale: higher markup on cheap parts, lower on expensive equipment. Set targets as margin, then convert to markup.
- 4
Build task prices
Task hours × hourly rate + materials at selling price. Round to clean numbers.
- 5
Set member prices
A percentage off service, or an explicit price per item. Keep the rule simple enough for a tech to explain.
The markup and margin calculator converts a margin target into the markup to enter for each item. For the full labor rate math, see how to price HVAC jobs.
How big should a price book be?
Smaller than most are. Price books inherited from vendors or years of add-ons can carry thousands of items nobody sells. Rank items by invoice lines over the last 12 months and see how few items cover most of your tickets; that list is your core.
The research on "too many choices" is more mixed than sales blogs suggest. A meta-analysis of 50 experiments found an average choice-overload effect of virtually zero, with large differences between studies.1 So the case for a lean price book isn't that customers freeze; it's that techs find the right item faster, prices stay consistent and there's less to keep current. Our price book cleanup guide walks through cutting a bloated book down.
Price book vs price list vs estimate
| Price book | Price list | Estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Master catalog with cost, price, margin, descriptions | Items and prices only | A priced proposal for one customer |
| Who uses it | Everyone who quotes | Usually the office | The customer |
| Changes | Staged and published on a schedule | Ad hoc | Built per visit from the price book |
| Holds options | Templates and kits for good, better, best | No | The options actually presented |
How to keep a price book current
Price book upkeep
- Recalculate the hourly rate yearly and re-price every task
- Update costs as soon as supplier price changes land
- Review items with margin below target monthly
- Retire items with no sales in 18 months unless flagged to keep
- Stage changes as a draft and publish them on a set day
- Tell techs what changed before it reaches their phones
How the price book works in TradesWork
The TradesWork price book holds services and materials with price, member price, cost and margin, and changes sit as staged drafts that don't reach the field until you publish them. The full active price book, with images, kits and member prices, downloads to the technician app before the day starts, so techs can build estimates in a basement with no signal. Multi-location shops keep one central price book with per-branch price overrides. Supplier price files can update costs, and AI office help proposes a cost update when a supplier bill comes in more than 3% above the price book cost (the threshold is adjustable). TradesWork doesn't offer live distributor pricing or AI-seeded price books.
Footnotes
-
Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload, Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter M. Todd, Journal of Consumer Research 37(3), October 2010, pp. 409–425. ↩
