Stop Guessing: Automate Your Margins with Precision Pricing
For any service company, financial control requires two distinct numbers: exactly what a job costs you, and exactly what you should charge the client. Confusing the two leads to either under-billing your customers or over-inflating your internal costs.
We have upgraded our calculation engine to handle this duality. The system now operates a "Split Pipeline" logic: it tracks the True Cost of your engineer's actual time on-site, while simultaneously calculating a Suggested Sale Price based on your billing rules, minimums, and profit markups.
1. The "Split Pipeline": Cost vs. Sale
Most systems overwrite the engineer's actual time with the billed time, destroying your ability to track efficiency. Our system keeps them separate to give you the full financial picture:
Pipeline A: True Cost
Input: Actual Time Worked
(e.g., 15 mins)
Logic: Multiplied by Engineer's Hourly Rate
Result: The exact wage cost to your business.
Benefit: Accurate P&L and Efficiency Reporting.
Pipeline B: Suggested Sale
Input: Billing Rule
(e.g., Minimum 1 Hour)
Logic: Cost Rate + Profit Markup %
Result: The maximized price for the customer.
Benefit: Guaranteed Profit Margin on every job.
2. The Profit Engine: Automated Markups
You no longer need to manually calculate sell rates. Simply define your desired margin, and the system does the math.
- Labour Markups: Define a percentage markup (e.g., 50%). The system takes the engineer's cost rate, applies your billing minimums, and adds your markup automatically.
- Travel Markups: Recovering fuel isn't enough; you should profit from the journey. The system calculates the travel cost and applies a separate Travel Markup to the final ticket.
3. Intelligent Billing Rules
We eliminate lost revenue from short service calls by enforcing strict billing constraints that apply only to the Sale Price, leaving your cost data pure.
| Feature |
How it Works |
The Profit Outcome |
| Minimum Charge |
Sets a "floor" for billing. If an engineer is on-site for 10 minutes, but your minimum is 1 Hour, the system bills for 1 Hour. |
You pay the engineer for 10 minutes (Low Cost), but charge the client for 1 Hour + Markup (High Revenue). |
| Rounding Increments |
Automatically rounds the billable time up to the nearest interval (e.g., 15, 30, or 60 minutes). |
Captures "leakage." A 65-minute job is billed as 1.5 Hours (if rounding is set to 30 mins). |
4. Granular Rate Switching
Of course, the foundation of the system remains our precision rate-switching engine. We eliminate blanket hourly rates by distinguishing between Standard, Overtime, and Bank Holiday work periods.
- Minute-by-Minute Accuracy: The system precisely measures how much of a job falls into standard hours versus overtime hours. If a job bleeds into the evening, the system automatically applies the premium rate to just those specific minutes.
- Bank Holiday Intelligence: When a job is flagged as a Bank Holiday, the system automatically bypasses standard rules and applies the dedicated Bank Holiday Rate to the entire duration.
The Ultimate Benefit: Confidence
Integrating this advanced calculation into your platform provides immediate, tangible benefits:
- Protected Margins: You never undercharge. The "Greater of Actual vs. Minimum" rule ensures you always bill for the maximum viable amount.
- Automated Consistency: Whether it's a junior admin or a senior manager raising the invoice, the price is always calculated correctly according to your company rules.
- True Visibility: By separating "Cost" from "Sale," you can finally run reports to see exactly how profitable your short-duration jobs really are.
If you would like to know more about AutoVu and what we can do to help your business, why not check out our Frequently Asked Questions page, or Contact Us any time to discuss your specific requirements.