Pricing In Non-Billable Time: Admin, Quoting and Supplier Runs

Why this is the hidden hole in most rates

Most tradespeople look at a 40-hour week and assume they’re being paid for 40 hours. Problem is that 40 rarely equals 40 billable hours. Writing quotes, phoning suppliers, invoicing, chasing payments and answering enquiries are real work — and almost never paid for directly by customers. I’ve seen lads spend half a day on an estimate and not win the job. That’s not just annoying, it’s an actual cost. If you don’t recognise that cost and build it into your rates, you’re running a loss-making job every time you do the admin on someone else’s watch.

Small pockets of time add up quicker than you think. Ten-minute phone calls turn into thirty when you’re chasing an order. A trip to the merchant for screws becomes an hour with queuing and a coffee break you didn’t plan. Two or three of those trips a week equals several billable hours lost. Over a month that’s days you’re not charging customers for. Your hourly rate is meaningless if every week you quietly eat an extra 20–30 per cent of your time on non-billable tasks that clients assume are free.

Most people price with a naive calculator: desired wage divided by working hours, slap on a markup and job done. Those spreadsheets ignore admin, downtime between jobs, travel, quote prep and follow-ups. These aren’t optional extras, they’re the overhead of doing business. If you don’t account for them you underprice work, then either put in extra hours to hit the same take-home or accept lower profit. Neither choice scales. You end up tired, poor and trapped in the business doing the plumbing rather than running it.

That leak shows up as smaller profits and more evenings spent doing paperwork. You finish on site, then stay up late invoicing, chasing payment, ordering materials and replying to messages. It’s unsustainable and wears you down. The fix is straightforward: measure the non-billable load, reduce what you can, and bake what’s left into your rates as overhead. Then every hour on site contributes to running the business, not just to the job in front of you.

Measuring it honestly

You’ve got to record everything for at least two full weeks. Not guesswork, not ‘roughly an hour’ — write it down or use a simple time-tracking app and log tasks and durations: on-site billable work, quoting time, supplier runs, admin, travel between jobs, phone calls and follow-ups. Be brutal. You’ll be surprised how many ten-minute tasks add up to hours when logged. Don’t cheat by lumping short jobs into ‘misc’; those ten-minute bits are the ones that eat your profit and keep you late on a Friday.

When you analyse the log, separate time into billable, non-billable and travel/waiting. Travel and waiting are often forgotten but they’re real costs. If you spend 30 minutes each way travelling and 45 minutes waiting for a specialist, that’s over an hour you can’t invoice elsewhere. Add up totals and calculate the percentage of your working time that is non-billable. Typical tradespeople find 20–35 per cent, sometimes more. That percentage is the number you use to load into your hourly or day rate so the business covers these hours.

Look for patterns, not just totals. Are there days with heavy admin? Do quote sessions cluster and take half a day? Do supplier runs spike on certain projects? If Tuesdays are admin-heavy, batch that work to a single afternoon instead of letting it fragment your week. Batching cuts interruptions and frees bigger blocks for billable work. A simple spreadsheet with date, task, duration and category will reveal patterns quickly. Once you know where time leaks, you can make targeted changes to reduce them.

Finally, be honest about billing for non-billable work. Many tradespeople try to slap an ‘admin fee’ onto quotes and expect customers to accept it; often they don’t. A better approach is to treat measured non-billable time as overhead — like tools, insurance and van running costs — and bake it into your rates. If you must itemise, do it as a transparent, fair call-out or fixed estimate fee, but the easiest way is to load the overhead into your hourly or day rate so you don’t have awkward conversations every week.

How to price non-billable time into your rates

Once you have your percentage of non-billable time, convert it into a loading factor and apply that to your rate. Simple maths: if 30 per cent of your time is non-billable, divide 1 by (1 minus 0.30) to get ~1.43. Multiply your desired take-home rate by 1.43 and that’s the rate you should charge for on-site hours to cover the unseen work. For example, if you want to take home the equivalent of £30 an hour net after costs, you’d need to charge roughly £43 an hour to account for that 30 per cent lost time.

That headline rate should also factor in overheads like insurance, van running costs, tools, holiday and sick days, pension contributions and a profit margin. Don’t forget tax and national insurance. Too many blokes quote without allowing for these predictable bills. Use real numbers from your bank statements — vehicle fuel, tyres, insurance, adverts, software subscriptions — add them up monthly and divide by billable hours to get a true per-hour overhead. Then add your desired wage on top. The loaded rate covers both wage and business survival.

Day rates are often easier for jobs where travel and set-up take significant time. If you work a standard day and have a 30 per cent non-billable load, convert your hourly loaded rate to a day rate by multiplying by the number of billable hours you realistically achieve in a day. Lots of tradespeople quote eight-hour days but only get six billable hours when travel and admin are accounted for. Quote the day-rate based on realistic billable hours, not contractual hours, and you’ll stop eating time on the road.

Be prepared to explain the reasoning to customers who push back. You don’t have to lecture them on overhead percentages — keep it simple and practical: your price covers your time on site plus the admin that makes projects run to plan. If pressed, explain you’ve priced to be reliable: arriving on time, ordering correct materials, handling permits and warranty paperwork. Most sensible clients accept that reliability costs a bit more than the cheapest quote.

Reduce and control non-billable time

Measurement tells you where time goes; action reduces it. Start by batching admin — allocate one or two fixed slots each week for quoting, invoicing and chasing payments. Treat that slot like a job: no site calls, no pop-ins, focused work. Batching stops fragmented ten-minute tasks from eating the week. I coach lads to reserve Friday afternoons for paperwork; it’s quieter for calls and gives a tidy handover into the weekend. Batching also helps with productivity: you’ll get through a stack of quotes faster when you’re in the flow.

Use technology sensibly. A simple quoting template or spreadsheet saves time on every estimate. Use cloud invoicing to send invoices immediately and automate payment reminders — that cuts chasing time massively. Put go-to supplier lists and typical material packs into your phone so you can message ahead or place orders quickly. But don’t overcomplicate it with fancy software unless you’ll actually use it. The point is to reduce friction, not create another admin job to learn the system.

Tidy your van and kit so you’re not making 20-minute trips to find a drill bit. Keep standard materials and a small stock of the common bits you use — a sock full of screws and fixings pays for itself when it saves trips. Plan jobs so supplier runs are grouped: order materials early and collect once instead of three separate runs. Use local merchants smartly — ring ahead to check stock and save time queuing. Little changes like that shave hours off your month and make the day less grindy.

Delegate where you can. If you have a partner, apprentice or subcontractor, let them handle supplier runs, deliveries and basic admin. Even a few hours a week off your plate compounds into more billable work. If hiring isn’t an option, consider swapping admin with another sole trader — you do their ordering in exchange for them doing a morning of your quoting. The point is to recognise tasks that don’t need your skilled labour and get them off your schedule so you can sell the work that only you do.

Charging customers and communicating value

Customers normally won’t pay an ‘admin fee’ unless it’s framed properly. Don’t hide costs as vague charges. If you need to charge for travel or quoting, be upfront: say you charge a small assessed fee for onsite quotes that’s deducted from the final bill if the job goes ahead. That approach filters unserious enquiries and means the time you spend creating a detailed, accurate quote is paid for. Many homeowners respect that and prefer the transparency, especially if it guarantees a properly prepared estimate.

Fixed-price quotes are helpful because they cover all the non-billable stuff inside one number. People prefer certainty. When you prepare a fixed-price quote, include a line that says this price accounts for necessary admin, materials sourcing and project management — keep it short and practical. If a customer wants a cheaper option, offer a cheaper quote with fewer services (no project management, materials supplied by client, limited warranty). Giving options keeps control in your hands and avoids scope creep that eats time and profit.

For repeat work or maintenance, consider a retainer or service contract. Tradespeople doing regular landlord work or contracts for businesses can charge a monthly fee that covers call-outs, admin and discounted labour. That model smooths cashflow and reduces constant quoting. If you go this route, write clear terms: response times, what’s included and what counts as extra. The retainer should reflect the non-billable time you know you'll spend managing the account, not guesswork.

Common mistakes

• –Assuming every hour worked is a billable hour when setting the rate
• –Not tracking time spent on quotes that are never won
• –Doing supplier runs mid-morning during otherwise billable hours without accounting for the lost time
• –Believing admin time 'doesn't count' because no invoice is raised for it

Questions people ask

Can I charge customers directly for quoting time?

For simple domestic jobs, generally no — it's expected to be free. For complex commercial estimates involving significant design or survey time, a paid estimating fee (sometimes credited against the job if won) is common practice.

How much non-billable time is normal?

Most sole traders find 25-35% of their working week is non-billable once quoting, admin and supplier runs are counted honestly. If yours is much higher, look at whether admin systems or a part-time bookkeeper would pay for themselves.