How-to2 min read

Labor rates: what your company charges to do the work

An estimate prices labor from a rate card you fill in: what your company charges to do each kind of work, per square, per linear foot, or each.

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Without it every labor line on every estimate comes back unpriced, which is the commonest reason an estimate looks wrong when the material side is fine.

Connecting a supplier does NOT fix labor and never could. A supplier sells you products, not crews, so the estimate never asks one about a labor line. Labor comes from your rate card and nowhere else.

Each rate is a cost, not a customer price. Your quote template margin is applied on top, exactly as it is for materials. The unit beside each row is set by the work itself and is not a choice: tear-off is priced per square, gutter per linear foot, a chimney reflash each. A rate entered against a different unit silently matches nothing, so the unit is shown rather than asked for.

If you run crews in more than one market, set a company default and then override only the markets that differ. Anything left blank in a market falls back to the default.

A pay rate for an individual person or crew is a different thing and is not what prices an estimate. An estimate is built days or weeks before anyone is scheduled, so there is no person to take a rate from yet, and the work is measured in squares and feet rather than in hours. What you pay a person belongs with payroll and job costing.

Editing labor rates takes Modify on Account.

Step by step

  1. Open Labor rates in account settings. Every kind of work an estimate can produce is listed, grouped by trade, whether or not it has a rate yet. A blank row is the finding: it is work your estimates currently cannot price. Where: Settings › Labor rates. Needs Modify on Account.
  2. Enter your cost for each kind of work in the unit shown beside it, and save the row. Start with the ones you do on every job: tear off and install, steep-slope adder, and hand load. Needs Modify on Account.
  3. Generate an estimate again. The labor lines price from your rates, and the panel at the top of the estimate stops reporting labor as missing.

Who can do this

Access in Trussi is a capability granted to a role. If one of these is missing from your role, an account admin can grant it; see roles, permissions and why something is hidden.

  • Modify on Account

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