Getting Started with Flat Rate Pricing

What is Flat Rate Pricing?

Flat Rate Pricing is simply the act of charging all customers the same price for the same work. This is beneficial for the following reasons:

Customers know the exact price of the work up-front. There is no estimates and no guessing.
Because the rate is task driven rather than time driven, there is no need for the customer to time everything the technician does.
Customers can plainly see that the price you are charging them is the same price you charge everyone.
It protects your company from price gouging accusations. It is possible to charge customers different amounts for the exact same work when using time and material billing simply because one technician is faster, more efficient or more motivated than another. This cannot happen using Flat Rate Pricing.
Because the labor, material and tax is all combined into a single rate it allows you to charge a fair rate for your labor without having to justify it to the customer.

ESC allows you to import flat rate prices from popular programs or create your own directly in ESC.

Importing Flat Rate Pricing

See this help topic to learn how to use ESC's Flat Rate Part Import utility. This utility will allow you to import price books from Callahan / Roach, Collier, Flat Rate Plus, Maio, National Standard Pricing Guide, Profit Strategies & UpFront Pricing.

Creating Your Own Flat Rate Prices

It is easy to create your own flat rate pricing using ESC as well. To do this follow these simple steps.

Before jumping directly into flat rate pricing, please make sure you have taken the time to set your inventory defaults first. Review the Getting Started with Inventory Guide to make sure you have followed all the steps in it before proceeding.
Set your flat rate defaults. These are the formulas that determine how to calculate the different levels of your flat rate pricing. See the Flat Rate Section of this article to learn how to set these defaults.
Once that is finished, create a new part or recall the existing one you wish to assign flat rate pricing to, and click the Flat Rate tab. Here you will see a field asking for the amount of labor hours used on average to complete this task. Enter the hours and click the Calculate Flat Rate Prices button. This will cause the flat rates fields to the right to be filled in. Any trip charge will appear in the appropriate column for Primary type repairs, while Additional Repairs will reflect either the elimination of the Trip Charge or a reduction of the material or labor price (depending on the option you selected in the Flat Rate Setup area of Inventory Setup). The labor hours you entered for that part will be multiplied by the Labor Rate you set in the Flat Rate Setup screen, the Material price will be the Price A of the part, and any tax or adders will also be calculated based on your settings from the setup screen.

Configuring How Flat Rate Prices Appear on Invoices

Most companies that use flat rate pricing chose to include the tax in the flat rate part rather than having it broken out separately on the invoice. If you want to do this, go to File | Print Options and select Combine tax into flat rate parts on invoices.

Using Flat Rate Parts

Regardless of whether you imported flat rate data from another vendor or created it yourself in ESC, the method for using flat rate pricing on an invoice is the same. See this article to learn exactly how that works.