Subcontractor markup on materials: fair profit or lazy padding?

I used to think a 15% materials markup was total BS until I ran a small bathroom reno in Phoenix last month and realized I was eating 3 hours of sourcing and delivery time for free, so now I'm torn between charging my own clients 10% to cover my costs or staying at zero and hoping the labor rate makes up for it, what do you all do on your bids?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

the_olivia19d ago

Ugh, that's the eternal struggle, right? The real question is, are you actually breaking out your sourcing time as a line item on the bid, or just rolling it into the labor rate and hoping no one asks questions? If you can't explain to a client exactly what that 10% covers, you're gonna get pushback either way, so which one feels cleaner to defend when they inevitably nitpick the invoice?

1