What to charge for a call-out
The call-out charge is the most misunderstood number in the trade. Half of trades don't charge one because they think it loses them work. The other half charge one but can't explain it, so it does lose them work.
The point of a call-out is simple: small jobs cost you the same travel, van, tools and admin as big ones, and the customer's twenty-minute repair is actually ninety minutes of your day. Price that honestly and you can afford to keep doing small jobs — which are, in the long run, where your best customers come from.
All figures below are indicative. Rates vary hugely by trade and region; use these as the shape, not the number.
What a call-out is actually paying for
Break the "twenty-minute job" down:
| Element | Real time |
|---|---|
| Taking the call, diagnosing over the phone, booking | 10–15 min |
| Travel each way | 20–60 min |
| Parking, kit in, kit out | 10 min |
| The actual work | 20 min |
| Writing it up, invoicing, chasing payment | 10–15 min |
That's routinely 90 minutes to two hours of your working day for twenty minutes of spannering. Charge for the twenty minutes and you are working for a fraction of your rate — and you've also lost the ability to book anything else into that slot.
The call-out isn't a penalty. It's the price of the slot.
Four ways to structure it
1. Call-out fee plus hourly. A fixed fee to attend (covering the first period — commonly the first hour or half hour), then an hourly or part-hourly rate after that. Clear, common, easy to explain.
2. Minimum charge. No separate "call-out"; you just have a floor. "Minimum charge is one hour." Customers often find this easier to swallow than a fee they perceive as being for nothing.
3. Fixed-price common jobs. A published price for the jobs you do constantly — replace a tap, clear a trap, replace a consumer unit RCD, swap a shower pull-cord. Includes attendance. Removes the whole conversation and converts on the phone brilliantly.
4. Diagnostic fee, credited against the work. You charge to attend and diagnose; if they go ahead with the repair, the fee comes off. Good for jobs where the fault-finding is the work. Fair to both sides and it converts well — but be clear whether it's credited against the repair or against a quote, and cap how long the credit lasts.
Most one-person trades end up on some mix of 3 for the predictable stuff and 1 or 2 for everything else.
Setting the number
Work back from your day rate rather than picking a figure that "sounds about right."
If a small job genuinely consumes a quarter of your working day once travel and admin are counted, the total you charge for it should be roughly a quarter of your day rate — whether that arrives as a call-out fee, a minimum charge, or a fixed price. That's the arithmetic. If you don't know your real day rate, start with how to work out your day rate, because every other number in your business hangs off it.
Then adjust for three things:
- Travel radius. A flat fee across a 40-mile radius is a loss-maker at the edges. Either set a radius and stick to it, or band your fee by distance. Banding is easy to explain: "Within 10 miles it's X, out to 25 it's Y."
- Local rates. Don't price a London call-out in a rural market or vice versa. Ring round as a customer if you genuinely don't know what the going rate is.
- What it's competing with. Your competition on emergencies isn't the tradesperson down the road, it's the national outfits with a call centre — and their fees are usually higher than yours.
Out of hours, weekends and emergencies
Evening, weekend and bank holiday work should cost more, and customers expect it to. The usual structures:
| Period | Typical loading |
|---|---|
| Weekday evenings | 1.25–1.5× |
| Saturdays | 1.5× |
| Sundays and bank holidays | 1.5–2× |
| Genuine middle-of-the-night emergency | 2× or a fixed emergency fee |
Two things make this work. Publish it — on your website, in your text-back message, in your voicemail — so nobody is surprised. And define the boundaries: what time does "evening" start, what counts as an emergency. Vagueness here is what turns a fair premium into a complaint.
How to say it on the phone without losing the job
This is the whole game. The fee isn't the problem; the delivery is.
Weak: "There's a call-out charge, it's £X, and then it depends." That sounds like a meter running.
Better: "It's £X to come out, and that covers the first hour on site — most jobs like this are done inside that. If it turns out to need parts or longer, I'll tell you the price before I do anything."
Three things that landed there: a fixed, knowable number; what they get for it; and a promise that nothing happens without their say-so. That last one is what people are actually worried about.
For fixed-price jobs, it's even easier: "A tap swap is £X all in, including the tap. Thursday morning suit you?"
The rules that stop call-outs going wrong
Never do work above the fee without agreeing it first. Diagnose, stop, price, get a yes, continue. Every dispute over a call-out started with someone doing "just a bit extra."
Take payment on the day. Small jobs are the ones that go unpaid, because they're too small to chase and too annoying to write off. Card reader or payment link before you leave the drive.
Put the fee in writing before you attend — text message is fine and is far better than nothing. "Confirming: £X call-out including first hour, parts extra, I'll price anything over that before starting." That text is your evidence if it ever goes sideways.
Charge for aborted visits. No access, nobody home, dog in the kitchen. If you turned up, you charge — and say that up front so it isn't a shock.
When to waive it
Waiving the fee is a marketing decision, not a weakness — as long as you're doing it on purpose:
- Existing good customers, occasionally, as goodwill. It buys enormous loyalty.
- When the visit is really a sales call for a big job you want. A boiler quote isn't a call-out.
- Warranty returns on your own work. Obviously.
What you shouldn't do is waive it because someone pushed back. Discounting under pressure teaches customers to push, and word gets round faster than you'd think.
Missed calls are where call-out money actually goes
Here's the uncomfortable part. Call-out and emergency work is won by whoever answers — and you're a trade, so you're often under a sink or up a ladder when the phone goes. That caller doesn't leave a voicemail; they ring the next number.
You can't answer every call. What you can do is make sure nobody who rings you gets nothing back. A text within a minute — "Sorry, I'm on a job. What's the problem and where are you? I'll ring you back within the hour" — recovers a huge share of those calls, because the customer's problem is urgent and your reply is the first one they've had. More on that in why you're losing jobs to missed calls.
Emergency and call-out work goes to whoever replies first. QuoteSnap texts back every missed call automatically — with your call-out terms in the message — so the job doesn't go to whoever picked up instead. Try it free for 14 days.