How to price travel so a job across town does not run at a loss
Three structures cover almost every service business, and the choice between them depends on how spread out the work is rather than on preference.The reserve study said the roof had four years. The assessment arrived in two
A condo association deferred two maintenance cycles to hold dues flat, and the bill that eventually arrived was not spread over anything.Same burst pipe, two towns apart, handled five different ways
Identical damage produces different work, different paperwork and different costs depending on soil, sewer, code and who is licensed to touch it.Write the change order before the work, or pay for it after
Most disputes on small jobs are not about the original price. They are about work nobody wrote down, agreed to verbally in a hallway.Hourly, flat fee, or contingency. Which billing arrangement fits which legal problem
The same matter quoted three ways produces three different risk profiles for the client, and only one of them is usually right for a given problem.Mileage logged in June is worth more than mileage remembered in March
Vehicle deductions are among the largest available to a small operator and among the easiest to lose, and the difference is a contemporaneous record.Claim it or absorb it? The arithmetic behind a small property loss
Filing a small claim can cost more over the following years than the claim pays, and the calculation depends on facts you can look up.Six people arrive after a water loss. What each of them is actually deciding
A single event brings a sequence of specialists through the house, each answering a different question, and most of them are not answering yours.Converting a sole proprietorship to an LLC, and what actually changes on Monday
The filing is the easy part. The work that determines whether the structure protects anything is the housekeeping in the weeks afterward.The contractor stopped answering. The state licensing board answered instead
A half-finished bathroom, a cashed deposit and no return calls. The route that worked was not small claims court and did not involve an attorney.Photograph the closets before you need to. Building a home inventory that holds up
A contents claim is settled on what you can describe and prove, and the description is much easier to produce before anything happens to it.What the shelf tag is telling you, and who checks that the scale is honest
Unit pricing is the only number on a shelf tag that lets two packages be compared, and it is the one printed smallest.A shop rewrote its job ad and the applicant pool changed in three weeks
The old advert produced volume and almost no fit. Four specific changes cut the number of applications and raised the number worth interviewing.Water damage repairs need a permit more often than people think. Here is when
Drying and drywall usually do not need one. The moment framing, wiring, gas or plumbing is touched, the rebuild is a permitted job in most jurisdictions.Gutters, dryer vents, the crawl space. Which upkeep jobs are worth paying out for
Four routine jobs compared on what they cost in time, what a professional actually adds, and what a bad version of each looks like a year later.Working out of the spare room? What the home office deduction actually requires
The test is narrower than most people assume and the paperwork is lighter, and the local rules that surround it are a separate question entirely.A landscape crew, five hours of weekly drive time, and the repricing that fixed it
A two-crew yard maintenance company found a fifth of its paid hours went to driving between scattered jobs, then changed how it charged.