PressureWashingBossPro Blog — Quotes & Estimates

Setting a Minimum Job Charge in Your Pressure Washing Pricing

Every pressure washing owner has done the tiny job. The small back patio, the single front walk, the one stained spot on a driveway. You drive across town, unload, set up, wash for twenty minutes, break down and drive back, and the job paid less than the gas, chemicals and time it took. A minimum job charge is how you stop doing that.

Why a Minimum Matters

Commercial work, covered in Commercial Pressure Washing Bids: Storefronts, Drive-Thrus, Dumpster Pads and Garages, usually involves big enough areas or recurring schedules that minimums rarely come up. Residential work is where small jobs sneak in.

The cost of a pressure washing job is not just the minutes the wand is running. Every stop includes the drive, unloading, running hoses, connecting to the spigot, pre-wetting plants, the clean itself, rinsing, rolling everything back up and the drive to the next stop. On a small job, the fixed part of that can be most of the time. A square-foot rate alone will price a 200 square foot patio as if setup were free.

How Operators Set the Number

The minimum is an operator policy, and there is no single right figure. Most owners land on it by thinking through:

• The fixed time on every stop: drive, setup and breakdown.
• What an hour of rig time needs to earn to cover labor, fuel, chemicals, equipment wear and overhead.
• Their market. A minimum far above everyone else's turns away jobs that might lead to bigger ones.
• The work they want. A higher minimum steers the business toward bigger jobs; a lower one keeps small jobs coming for word of mouth.

As an example, an operator might set a $150 minimum on residential flatwork and a $250 minimum on any job that needs a full house setup. Those numbers are illustrations, not recommendations.

One Minimum or Several

Some companies use one minimum for everything. Others set different minimums by type of work:

• Flatwork minimum for driveways, walks and patios.
• House wash minimum, usually higher, since setup is longer.
• Roof minimum, higher again for the extra setup and care.
• Trip charge for areas outside the normal service area, as a separate line.

Keep it simple enough that anyone in the office can apply it without a chart. If it takes a meeting to figure out, it will not be applied consistently.

Showing the Minimum on the Estimate

Customers accept minimums better when they can see them. A few ways to show it:

• Set up a service like “Minimum Job Charge” on your service list and add it as a line when the job falls short, so the total is clear.
• Or price the small job at the minimum and add a short note: “Our minimum for flatwork is $150, which covers travel, setup and cleanup.”
• Put the minimum on your website and in your sign-up form pricing, so nobody is surprised.

Whichever way you do it, put it in writing on the estimate. A minimum that only gets mentioned on the phone gets forgotten by the time the invoice arrives.

Turning a Small Job Into a Real One

The best response to a below-minimum request is often an offer, not a refusal. If someone wants just a small patio done, show them what the minimum covers: “For the same $150, we can also do the front walk and steps.” Or offer the patio as part of a package with the driveway. Many customers would rather get more for the minimum than pay it for less.

Packages and add-ons both help here. A customer who called about a patio might end up with patio, walk and gutter brightening, which is a proper stop for the rig. Small jobs can also be grouped by neighborhood on a day when the rig is already nearby, which is easier when the jobs are on the same map.

Apply It Consistently

A minimum only works if it is applied every time. When it lives on your service list in PressureWashingBossPro, it is one click away on every estimate, and everybody in the office uses the same number. Once the customer approves online, the minimum line carries onto the job and the invoice like any other line, so there is no surprise at the end. For more on the pieces that go onto an estimate, read Job Details on the Estimate: Surfaces, Square Feet and Access Notes That Carry Onto the Job, and to see the full set of quoting tools visit the PressureWashingBossPro pressure washing estimate software page.