GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Running a Garage Door Business

Setting Service Prices for a Garage Door Business Without Guessing

Ask a small garage door company how they price a spring replacement and you will often hear “depends.” Depends on the door, the springs, the customer, the day. Some of that is real. A lot of it is pricing from scratch on every driveway, which means the same repair costs different amounts depending on who quoted it and how tired they were.

Why a Written List Matters Once You Hire

When you hire office help, as covered in Hiring an Office Person for a Garage Door Company: What They Run and How to Hand It Over, the first question they ask is “how much do we charge for…?” If the only answer is in your head, every quote goes through you.

A written service list fixes that. It gives techs and the office the same number for the same work, makes quotes faster, and makes it obvious when a price needs to change. This article does not tell you what to charge. Your prices should come from your own costs, your area and how you want to run the company. It is about building a list you can stand behind.

Start With the Work You Actually Do

Write down every kind of job you do in a normal month. For most residential garage door companies that list looks something like:

• Service call or diagnostic visit
• Torsion spring replacement, extension spring replacement
• Cable replacement, roller replacement, off-track repair
• Opener repair, opener install
• New door install, panel or section replacement
• Safety sensors, keypads and remotes
• Weatherstripping and bottom seals
• Yearly tune-up
• Commercial door repair and scheduled commercial maintenance
• After-hours emergency

That is your service list. Each line will get a price, and some will get variations: a single-car door versus a double, a standard opener versus a wall-mount jackshaft.

Build Each Price From Its Parts

For each service, think through what it really costs you: parts, time on site, drive time, the van, the tech's wage, your overhead, and the profit you want left over. A $295 torsion spring replacement, as an example number, has to cover the springs, the tech's time, the truck and the office person who booked it, and still leave something for the business.

Where size matters, price off it. GarageDoorBossPro saves measurements on each property (square feet, number of doors, number of openers), and services can be priced off them. A house with three doors and two openers gets a tune-up price that reflects the extra work without anyone doing math on the driveway.

Decide How Bundles and Add-Ons Work

Many repairs come with extras. A spring job often turns up worn rollers or frayed cables. Decide in advance how you price those add-ons when they are done on the same visit, so the tech is not inventing a discount on the spot. Put the add-on items on the list too, so they can go on an estimate or an invoice as their own lines.

The same goes for the service call fee: is it charged on its own, waived when the repair is approved, or folded into the repair price? That decision is big enough for its own article, The Service Call Fee: How a Garage Door Company Charges for the Trip.

Put the List Where Quotes Are Built

A price list in a binder still gets ignored. In GarageDoorBossPro estimates are built from your service list. The office or the tech picks “Opener install” and your price comes with it. The equipment details for that door can be filled in on the estimate, the customer approves online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job with the same lines. When the tech completes it, the invoice matches the estimate, with sales tax added where it applies.

Estimate templates help with common combinations. A “new double door with opener” template saves building the same quote from scratch every time.

Review Prices on a Schedule

Parts costs change, wages change and your own sense of what a job takes changes as the company grows. Set a time, maybe once or twice a year and in the slow season, to walk through the list. Look at jobs that always seem to run long, quotes that rarely get approved and services you never sell.

Changing a price in the service list updates every new estimate and invoice from then on. Existing quotes keep the price the customer saw.

Prices the Customer Can Trust

Consistent pricing is also good customer service. Neighbors compare notes. A customer who paid one price for a repair last year and hears a very different number this year starts to wonder. A written list, applied the same way by everyone in the company, is easier to explain and easier to defend. To see how pricing, estimates and invoices connect across the company, visit the GarageDoorBossPro garage door business software page.