Permanent Lighting Profit Margin: Three Jobs Worked

What do the three jobs make side by side?#

The bungalow is the first-job example from our permanent business start guide, the two-storey is above, and the complex roof is the $6,160 quote from our permanent quote template: 198 lit ft with a 24 ft ridge line, four peaks and three controller zones. All three are pure defaults on the track card.

The two-storey wins on percentage because the storey and pitch premiums add $521 of revenue for maybe two extra crew-hours. The complex roof has the most dollars and the lowest profit per hour, because the ridge, the third zone and the second trip day are hours that the per-foot rate only partly pays for. If your complex roofs keep landing at 24 crew-hours, set the flat per-peak premium; ours is $40, which is not the default, and it would add $160 to this job.

What happens to the margin at dealer cost?#

The same three jobs with only the materials line changed. ShawTech's 12mm RGB kit is $9 a foot at retail, and Thunder Lighting Supply's business guide uses $15 a foot of cost against $20 to $30 billed, so the honest range is wide.

Every $1 a foot on materials is $128 to $218 of profit on these houses. That is why the dealer agreement matters more than the per-foot rate: a $3 gap between retail and dealer cost is worth $561 on the two-storey, more than the whole storey premium. It is also why a product that costs $15 a foot needs a card above $25, not a better sales pitch. EverLights' 100 ft ClickLights bundle is $1,675, or $16.75 a foot at retail, and on the default card the two-storey becomes a 27 percent job.

How do these compare with what the other pages claim?#

Ours land under the headlines and inside the two supplier figures that show their work.

Gross margin the way Geiman and Thunder count it, revenue less materials and direct labour, is 44.5 percent on the bungalow, 48.9 percent on the two-storey and 46.3 percent on the complex roof at retail kit prices. That is the bottom of Thunder's range and just under Geiman's, which is what you would expect when the materials line is retail. At $9 a foot all three sit inside both ranges. Nothing on this page gets near Strandr's 60 to 80 percent, and the Strandr pages do not say how they got there.

What does year two make on a permanent customer?#

Nothing from an install, and that is the point of the product: no re-install, no takedown trip, no bin. Year two is service, and it has two prices depending on the calendar.

Inside your labour warranty, a callback is a cost. One person, 1.5 hours on site and an hour of driving, is $55 of wages, $6.60 of payroll, $19 of truck: $80.60, or about $87 with the card fee if you had billed it. That is what the $110 reserve on every job is for; it covers one callback per job with $23 to spare, and the node itself is a manufacturer claim if the product warranty covers it.

Outside the labour warranty, the same visit is revenue. Our example settings from the service call pricing guide, which are not defaults, are a $125 call-out that covers the drive and the first half hour, then $95 an hour.

Strandr's permanent guide says installers sell maintenance contracts at $200 to $500 a year; it gives no source and we do not sell one, so treat it as their claim. The year-two number I trust is the referral: a lit house on a dark street in February is the cheapest lead you will ever get, and it costs the same $0 as the callback you did not need.

Mistakes that eat the permanent margin#

• Pricing materials from a quote you have not placed. The kit price on a website is not your dealer cost, and your dealer cost is not the price after shipping and the connectors you forgot. Order the first job before you set the card for the tenth.
• Ordering lit footage without the buffer, or with the buffer on the price. Channel is cut per house and does not go back on the shelf. Ten percent on the order, zero on the price.
• Paying yourself nothing. Both people on this table earn $22 an hour, including you. If you take your own wage out, the two-storey is a 48 percent job and you worked ten hours for free.
• No warranty reserve. The first February callback comes off the profit of a job you closed in October. Put $110 on every job and the callback is already paid.
• Card fees on the balance. $155 on the two-storey, $1,557 across ten of them. Take the deposit by card so the date is booked, and offer e-transfer or cheque for the balance.
• The complex roof at the two-storey's hours. A ridge, a third zone and a second trip day are where permanent installs go over. Set the flat per-peak premium or raise the ridge rate; do not hope.
• Counting jumps as lit feet. Sixteen feet of cable ordered as sixteen feet of channel and nodes is $192 of material for lights that do not exist.

Where the numbers come from, and how to keep yours honest#

Every dollar of revenue above came from a drawing. The runs were drawn on a photo of the house, the footage came from the drawing, and the rate card turned the footage into the price, so the material order, the crew-hours and the ticket all describe the same 170 ft. That is how GlowBid works: draw once, and the footage, the bill of materials and the price cannot disagree. Put your dealer cost, your feet per crew-hour and your reserve on the card and this page becomes your P&L, job by job. Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular, and the free roofline tool runs the same drawing with no login until you export.