Most repairers price by looking at what the shop down the road charges. That tells you the ceiling. It does not tell you whether you are making money. Here is a plainer way to get to a price you can defend.
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Start with what the job costs you
Work out what an hour of your bench costs
Put a margin on the part
A worked example
Set a minimum charge, and decide about diagnostics
Offer two prices where the part allows it
Build the warranty in
Check it against your own numbers every few months
Things to avoid
Add up three things for a typical repair: the part, the small stuff that gets used up (adhesive, screws, tape, a screen protector if you include one), and the time. Use what the part actually costs delivered, not the price on the supplier's page, and include any VAT you cannot reclaim.
Time is the one people skip. Time a handful of real jobs from picking the phone up to putting it in the bag. A screen swap you think takes twenty minutes often turns out to be forty once you count opening the back, testing, cleaning up and writing the job up.
Take everything it costs to keep the shop open for a month: rent, rates, power, insurance, software, tools, your wages, and a figure for tax. Divide by the number of hours you can realistically spend repairing, not the hours the shop is open. If a shop is open 160 hours a month and 100 of them are spent at the bench, divide by 100.
That is the least an hour can cost you. Anything under it means the shop is paying to do the repair.
The mark-up on a part is not just profit. It pays for the screens that arrive faulty, the ones you fit twice, the time spent ordering and chasing, and the warranty you give. A part sold at cost plus nothing is a repair that loses money the first time something goes wrong.
Pick a margin for each type of part and stick to it unless there is a reason not to. do.repair lets you set one for the whole shop, and uses it only when it knows what a part cost you.
These numbers are made up, to show the arithmetic. Use your own.
| AMOUNT
Screen, delivered | £42.00
Part margin (50%) | £21.00
Adhesive and consumables | £1.50
Bench time: 45 minutes at £45 an hour | £33.75
Price before VAT | £98.25
Round that to £99, and add VAT if you are registered. If a rival is charging £79, the arithmetic tells you something: either they have a cheaper part, a faster hand, no warranty, or a shop that is losing money. It is worth knowing which before you copy them.
Some jobs cost you twenty minutes and end with "it is not worth fixing". Decide in advance what that is worth. A small diagnostic fee that comes off the price if they go ahead is easy to explain and keeps the shop from giving its time away. "No fix, no fee" is a fair promise too, but be honest with yourself about how often it applies.
For screens and batteries, offer a standard part and a better one at a clear price difference. Customers like choosing, and the choice is a simple way to answer "can you do it cheaper?" without discounting your labour.
If you give 90 days, some of those repairs will come back. Allow for that in the price rather than hoping it will not happen. Keep a note of what comes back and why. If one part supplier keeps showing up, that is a pricing problem as much as a quality one.
Prices drift. Parts get dearer, you get faster, a model goes out of fashion. Every quarter, look at what you made per hour on each type of repair, not just what you took. In do.repair the profitability report shows margin per hour by service, which is the quickest way to see which repairs pay and which ones keep you busy for nothing. A spreadsheet will do the same job if you keep it up.
Pricing from the cheapest shop in town. They may be losing money, or on their way to not being there.
Pricing the part and forgetting the time.
Free diagnostics on everything, then wondering where the afternoon went.
Changing a price after the customer has said yes without telling them first.
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