well yeah snap is honestly the only reason my rates arent $200/hour. i havent been using their speakers as much though, alot of LEON/Sonance. i dont deal with video at all anymore, i will offer a "shopping service" to help my customer pick out the TV they feel fits their needs the most. i charge for this service and if the customer requests that we pick it up from the store then we will for our hourly rate. (today i was in HHgregg for close to two hours dealing with their BS) I also think my clients like that im "honest" with TV sales as most think that that is our number one money maker. Its also nice when a panel takes a dump that i dont have to deal with the RA, the customer does.

to be honest like i said in my earlier post i dont do many TV install's anymore unless its part of a much larger system.

Hey man no need to defend yourself at all. I charge way less than that but the labor is never questioned (as Stamp says because I show mine a one man hour but always have two per job) on my bids. They pick the solution that fits their budget and i tack on the required labor estimate. Some fixed bid some T&M.

Keep it up. I just raised my rates by $20/hour based on this thread. :-)

lol Nice! i guess I should also mention i give a discount on the second man, but for the most part most of my jobs can be completed by me. Im a perfectionist and feel like nobody I hire can do as good as job is I can. 2nd man is usually the truck runner/attic guy which for the summer is my brother :)

I am curios is it by law you must state hour rate ?

We do not do it this way over , its fixed rate for each type of installation .

Also we charge for proposal with drawings and whatever paid will be deducted if THE WHOLE SYSTEM bought from us .

This way i do not have to worry about price shopping because if he bought somewhere else i got paid for my time .

If you can get $165 or $385 then good for you. But I bet for 1 man hour you are at the top of the spectrum in the country. I bet in the top 10% in the world.

i can agree with that, but as our industry shifts ever closer to a labor only model am i just a head of the curve or is it just that I know how to really sell myself/my company? I believe its the first :P i also give a 50% discount on labor for the second man because hes basically a grunt/wire monkey


not that i know of, but if a customer asks what your average hourly rate is you kind of got to tell them, you just cant say "idunno" most of my projects are fixed rate but that fixed rate works out to be 165/hr.

You have to have an idea of what your hourly rate is, you cant just pick a number out of no where and say "yeah its worth it to me to do this job at $XXXX.XX of dollars". do you?

165 an hour is very high... you need to make sure you are not over pricing yourself... some of the best firms int he country are way less than that. 100-110 per man per hour is the high end on average for anything that does not require a computer or programming 150-175 is for programming and anything that requires a computer.

if you can get 165 per man per hour ... god bless you, you are my hero... but i would not use you... at 165 an hour i could use a company with more experience and better than yours and still have money left over! my guess is your accountant does not understand the nature of this industry and is using models for something else.

you may consider charging less per hour but charging for all of your time. your hours work should be equal to your hours billed minus your operational time.

I agree with Mike. Reread what you wrote:


Okay -- labor is costing you more, so you have to raise your labor rate.


Wait a minute -- you're stating here that your issue is the cost of things that you buy. Those things, when you resell them, are subject to sales tax. Labor is not subject to sales tax. If you are raising your labor rates because your parts or product costs are higher, you are indeed evading paying tax. You're evading collecting higher taxes, too, so it's not like it's money in your pocket or not in your pocket, but still, raising labor instead of parts lowers keeps the sales tax you collect from raising, though the cost of parts is higher.


Yes, and you collect sales tax on that profit plus on the cost, that is, on the price of the AVR. If you keep the AVR price the same and raise your labor rates, the tax agency has a legitimate beef with you!


But the issue you're discussing is sales taxes, which you collect and pass on, not which come out of your pocket (unless you don't charge your customers sales tax, which is its own bag of worms).


Right -- but you must conceive of the margins as what they are, bill for them, collect sales tax and pay it.

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but see thats the thing, you have to charge for your time. A client isnt going to like seeing a charge for "fuel surcharge" and "ordering time" and "filling up the truck" and "paying the bills" etc etc.

For every one hour billed there is 2-3 hours of unbillable time like the above. your hourly rate needs to cover you/office staff to do those types of things.I used to work for free, but then I realized im an idiot for not billing for things that i should have. Most here are just a 1-3 man companies with the owner doing all the work, why can we "charge" for our time?

im a for proffit business, im not giving away my time/expertise

HUH! Ernie?

if i log in on Monday for a part that costs $100 and MSRP on that is $200 then im "making $100" if i log in and see that same part a week later for $120 but MSRP is still $200 IM "LOSING MONEY" before i made 100 now i make 80. how is raising my labor rates to cover the loss of $20 evading taxes? now obviously this is a crude example but it works for a $10 item or a 10,000 dollar item.

Yes i collect sales tax and that gets passed onto the customer so im not sure how you came up with sales tax in this discussion? BTW: if labor is associated with a sale of a system then you have to charge sales tax on the labor.....

years ago you could easily cover the cost of the job in the margin you made on a TV, now it cost's most of us money if we offer a TV. I dont get why you guys are so upset that my labor rates are what they are to keep myself in business. this is simple math guys.

if i make less on items that i sell with the job i need to charge more somewhere else to make the same o mount of "proffit" to clear the expense of doing that job IE, Fuel insurance labor etc etc etc....

the states dont care what the product costs me, as long as long as i charge sales tax on that item they get their money whether i sell it at cost (which i dont)or at MSRP (which every product is charged at MSRP). at the end of the year when you calculate profit/loss the money made in labor is still there and taxed if you made a proffit. The states/government is still makeing money off you

Labor is not subject to sales tax. |

Labor is taxable where I work, but not where I live. It may be different for his state also. BTW after all of the unpaid hours I have put in in the last week, I have a new hero.

you just made my point for me... you are not billing your customers properly... hours spent in the office or at the job site are billable to that client.

if you are at a job site for 6 hours you need to be charging that 6 hours plus whatever time at the office doing drawings, ordering parts administration of that project.

my guess is you could charge 110 per man hour and be even more profitable if you charged the client for all time involved

they do get charged for that time spent for ordering etc...what they dont get charged for is the administration work that comes with running a business. If you guys are charging for admin work and the client doesn't balk then power to you! what im saying is all that time spent running a business needs to be covered in the "proffit" of labor/parts. Also, i know you guys offer installation warranties, that all gets wrapped into the labor because when a wire comes on plugged or something stupid you cant "charge" them for that since you offer a 6-12 month install warranty.

My wife came home from work at the Dentist office she manages and said a Tech
came out and replaced a light bulb in one of the machines @$165.00 per hr. & 2 hr min +Parts, My labor went up the next day.

I started putting in a lump sum for labor rather then breaking it into per hour and the labor questions stopped immediately. What I charge per hour is no ones business.


I never negotiate labor.

Taxes aside, at the start of a model run of an AV Receiver which has a MSRP of $1700, nearing the end of the model run, whilst the MSRP (technically) still has not changed, the hifi or big box stores are generally running it out at around $1500 or sometimes less, killing any margin we may have had.

Using your 'crude example', if you are simply supplying and installing that receiver, which shouldn't take all that long, are you, therfore charging an extra $200 to make up that loss?

I see the sale of equipment, even cables etc as 'the cream' and over the years (like most) have done many smaller jobs that have been labour only. In saying that, naturally I prefer to be supplying the equipment and will normally push hard to do so.