Materials, fuel and insurance have all gone up. If your rate has not, you have taken a pay cut. Here is how to fix that calmly.
27 October 2026 · 6 min read
Most tradies would rather do an extra Saturday than have the conversation about prices. So rates sit still for years while van costs, insurance and materials creep up, and the margin quietly disappears. Putting your prices up is not greedy. It is keeping the business you have built worth running.
Do not pick a new number out of the air. Rebuild your rate from the bottom: what you want to earn, plus your yearly overheads, divided by the hours you can actually bill. The hourly rate calculator does the sum, and how to price a job walks through it step by step. Most people who do this find they have been undercharging for a while, not slightly overcharging.
The worry is losing customers. Run the numbers. Put your prices up by 10% and you would have to lose more than about 9% of your work before your turnover even fell, and you would be doing less work for it, with less fuel and fewer materials. In practice the customers who leave over a fair rise are usually the ones who haggled hardest and paid slowest. Losing a few of them often makes the week better, not worse.
The easiest place to raise prices is where nobody knows the old ones. Every new quote from today goes out at the new rate. Nothing to announce, nothing to explain. If you are booked up weeks ahead, that is the market telling you your price is too low, and new enquiries are where you test it first.
For repeat customers and landlords, give them a heads-up rather than a surprise on the invoice. Something like: "Just letting you know my rates are going up from 1 January because of rising costs. Anything booked before then stays at the current price." Keep it short. You do not need to justify every pound, and over-explaining makes it sound like an apology. A month or so of notice is courteous and gives them a reason to book now.
Put a validity period on every quote, for example 30 days, so an old price cannot be held over you months later when materials have gone up. Show labour and materials as separate lines so a rise in one does not look like a rise in everything. With GraftG quotes you set your rate once in settings and every new quote uses it, so the new price goes out consistently without you having to remember it on each job.
Some customers will ask for the old price. Hold the rate and offer something else instead: a smaller scope, a different finish, or booking in a quieter week. Dropping the price the moment someone pushes teaches them to push every time. Handling a customer asking for a discount has the wording.
Work it out from your costs rather than picking a figure. Rebuild your hourly rate from what you want to earn plus your overheads, divided by the hours you can bill. If that lands well above what you charge now, move towards it in one or two steps rather than waiting another year.
There is no fixed rule for one-off domestic work, but a month or so is courteous. Honour any quotes already given and anything booked before the change date. For ongoing contracts, check what the contract says about price changes and notice.
You may lose a few, usually the most price-sensitive ones. With a 10% rise you would need to lose more than about 9% of your work before turnover fell, and you would be working fewer hours for it.
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