A service call fee is the charge a field service company makes for turning up: the drive, the first half hour of diagnosis and a share of the overhead the office and the van carry whether or not the customer buys the repair. A trade call fee set by looking at the competitor's website is a guess; one worked from the company's own costs is a figure the owner can defend when the customer asks. This page walks how a service call fee is worked, shows where the overhead calculator on this site fits, and points at the free field service pricing calculator and invoice that carry the trip charge as its own line. It publishes no fee and no rate; every figure is the company's own.
What the fee has to cover
A call-out costs the company before any repair is sold: the tech's time on the road, the fuel and the van, and the first half hour on site finding the problem. It also carries a share of the overhead, the office, the insurance, the software, the unbillable hours, that every billable hour has to carry. The service call fee is the price of those things for a visit, and it is worked from the company's figures rather than from what the shop down the road charges. This site publishes no benchmark for it.
The overhead an hour carries, worked
The free field service pricing calculator turns the loaded technician cost, the billable hours a tech actually bills in a year, the overhead and the target margin into the hourly rate the company has to charge. The overhead per billable hour is the figure that decides the fee: a company whose overhead is $60,000 a year over 1,000 billable hours carries $60 of overhead on every hour, and a call-out that takes an hour of a tech's day, drive included, has to cover that before it covers the drive. Enter your own figures and the calculator returns your own rate.
The trade call fee on the invoice, as its own line
On the worked invoice the trip or diagnostic charge is $49, on its own line above the labor, so the customer sees the price of the visit before the price of the repair. With 1.5 hours at $90, $60 of parts at a 40% markup and 8% tax on the parts, the invoice is $274.72. Companies that waive the fee when the customer buys the repair record the waiver on the same line, so the record shows what was charged and what was given. The fee and the policy are the company's own.
Setting the fee and keeping it
Work the rate from the costs, decide what share of a visit the fee should recover, set it, and put it on every invoice as a line the tech does not have to argue about. FlatRateBook Pro keeps the fee with the rates the company priced each job at, so the history shows what was charged when; the free calculator and invoice work the figures with no account. This site publishes no fee: it works yours.
Questions people ask about service call fee
How is a service call fee worked out?
From the company's own figures: the drive and the diagnosis time at the rate the pricing calculator works, plus the share of overhead a visit should recover. The competitor's fee is not an input.
What does the overhead calculator do?
It turns the loaded technician cost, the billable hours, the overhead and the target margin into the hourly rate a tech has to bill, and shows the overhead each billable hour carries, which is the figure the call fee has to cover.
Should the trade call fee be waived when the customer buys the repair?
That is the company's policy. The invoice carries the fee as its own line either way, and a waiver is recorded on it, so the record shows what was charged and what was given.