The short answer
Discover the common costs founders overlook when pricing their services and how missing them can quietly eat into profitability.
Common Costs Founders Forget to Include in Their Pricing
When pricing services, many founders overlook the smaller costs that quietly add up and impact profitability. One of the most common is failing to allocate time for revisions or reworks, which can become a significant expense across the life of a project.
Another frequent oversight is not tracking employee time accurately. Admin tasks often go unbilled, even though they directly contribute to delivering a project. Compliance costs for staff, such as WorkSafe and payroll tax, should also be added on top of direct labour costs to give a true picture of what each employee actually costs the business.
Software subscriptions and overhead allocation are two more areas that often get missed. Every cost involved in delivering a service needs to be accounted for, because failing to include them leads to under-pricing and erodes the profitability of your projects over time.
Key takeaways
Include revisions, admin time and staff on-costs like WorkSafe and payroll tax in your pricing.
Track employee time accurately so unbilled work is visible.
Allocate software and overheads to every service you price.
Read next: how to work out what your service is worth, how to track the profitability of your services, or talk to our small business advisors.
Marissa has over eight years of bookkeeping experience and a genuine passion for helping businesses take control of their finances. She's proactive, precise, and committed to making bookkeeping easy, accurate, and stress-free for every client she works with. Whether it's reconciling accounts, tracking cash flow, or streamlining financial systems, she's across the detail so you don't have to be.
