Job pricing guide
How to price a fence repair job
Price fence repairs around demolition, post condition, digging, material matching, access, disposal, and finish work.
How should you price this job?
Identify every failed post, rail, picket, panel, and gate, then inspect access, soil, footings, material match, demolition, and disposal. Estimate known work separately from uncertain excavation or hidden rot, and add travel, overhead, job risk, and your target margin.
What affects the price?
- Posts, rails, or pickets affected
- Material and matching requirements
- Soil, concrete, and access
Pricing considerations
- Separate visible replacement quantities from uncertain post removal, buried obstacles, and additional rot.
- Include material pickup or delivery, demolition, concrete removal, haul-away, and site cleanup.
- Confirm utility-locate responsibilities, access, finish work, and weather-sensitive stages in the written scope.
What costs should you include?
Count every hour the job occupies—including paid travel—then add raw materials, vehicle cost, allocated overhead, and job-specific expenses. Add visible pricing adjustments and a risk reserve before using margin math to find the selling price. The pricing methodology explains each allocation and the difference between markup and margin.
Pricing workflow
- Walk the full damaged section and identify failed posts, rails, pickets, gates, rot, lean, and access constraints.
- Confirm utility-locate requirements, soil and footing conditions, material match, delivery, demolition, and disposal.
- Separate known replacement quantities from uncertain excavation or hidden rot before selecting difficulty and contingency.
Scope checklist
- List exact posts, rails, panels, pickets, fasteners, concrete, gates, and cleanup included.
- State whether material pickup or delivery, demolition, concrete removal, haul-away, paint, and stain are included.
- Exclude hidden underground obstacles, additional rot, grading, and utility conflicts unless separately authorized.
Common scope variables
- Demolition and haul-away
- Post replacement depth
- Gate alignment and hardware
- Paint or stain included
Costs commonly forgotten
- Buried utilities and locate requirements
- Concrete disposal
- Material delivery and weather delays
Pricing only the visible new lumber and overlooking demolition, old concrete removal, material pickup, haul-away, and difficult digging.
Flat rate or hourly?
Flat-rate pricing works after an on-site inspection. Use allowances or hourly pricing when post footings, buried obstacles, or hidden rot are uncertain.
In either case, calculate every planned allocation first. A flat rate should still pay for estimated working time, travel, overhead, risk, and target-margin surplus.
Worked pricing example
These hypothetical assumptions run through the same pricing engine as the calculator:
- Labor time
- 7 hours × 1 worker
- Travel time
- 1.25 hours
- Desired hourly compensation
- $55.00 per worker-hour
- Planned labor compensation
- $453.75
- Raw materials
- $220.00
- Material pricing adjustment
- 15% = $33.00
- Overhead allocation
- $1,100.00 ÷ 100 billable hours × 8.25 hours = $90.75
- Vehicle and job expenses
- $80.00
- Difficulty adjustment
- 20% = $124.90
- Contingency / risk reserve
- 10% = $96.94
- Target margin
- 25%
- Calculated minimum price
- $1,465.79
- Rounded suggested quote
- $1,475.00
The rounded quote contains $375.66 of target-margin surplus after all listed allocations. Replace every assumption with your own job numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Should material pickup time be included?
Yes. Include it as working or travel time, and consider vehicle cost.
How should unknown post conditions be priced?
Use a clear contingency or define a base scope with an add-on for difficult removal or excavation.
Use your actual numbers
Calculate your fence repair quote
Travel time is paid business time in this calculator. No local or national price averages are used.