Resources
Tools that do arithmetic you are currently doing in your head.
Not a blog. The things that actually cost service businesses money are pricing decisions made quickly under pressure, so this is where the calculators live.
Tool
Ceramic coating pricing calculator
Most coating jobs lose money in the preparation, not the coating. This works backwards from your own hourly rate and the real hours a job takes, rather than telling you what the market charges — because we have no honest basis for that and neither does anyone else quoting a national average.
How to use it properly
The number is only as good as your rate.
Take three coatings you actually completed. Put their real hours in. If the tool disagrees with what you charged, one of the two is wrong — and it is worth knowing which.
Rent, insurance, power, consumables and the hours you are not billing all come out of the hourly figure. A rate that only covers your wage is a hobby.
A neglected coupe can take longer than a well-kept SUV. Quoting from the vehicle alone is the most common way a coating job goes under water.
A two-day job is not just labour — it is the work you could not take. The day count matters as much as the price.
In progress
What is being built next.
Rather than publishing forty thin articles, the plan is a small number of tools that are genuinely worth bookmarking.
Partial front, full front, track pack and full body priced by film cost, coverage and install hours.
Stage and condition against realistic hours, so correction is quoted after inspection rather than hopefully.
Structure packages and add-ons so the customer can compare them and you can protect your margin.
Turn a one-off detail into a recurring interval, and work out what that is worth over a year.
The calculator is the estimate. ManePilot is the rest of it.
Pricing a job is one decision. Scheduling it, tracking it and getting paid for it is the part that takes the week.