How to calculate a service call fee
The loaded hour still starts with wage and burden. This page opens at $26 an hour, not because appliance techs 'should' earn that, but so the trade page is not a copy of the HVAC form. If you pay $34, type $34. Burden at 30% is payroll load, not a parts margin. Parts markup does not belong in the service call fee at all. The fee is the visit. The part is the part.
Overhead starts at $22 an hour: a van or a car with a modest stock, a laptop for diagrams, and the usual phones and software. Sealed-system work that requires recovery gear is a different overhead than a washer-and-dryer route. If you do both, you may want two saved links, one with higher overhead and longer on-site minutes. The address bar keeps each scenario. Local storage keeps the last one you used on this device.
Thirty minutes on site fits a washer that will not spin once you have the model and a meter. It is short for a refrigerator you have to pull out, a range that needs the burner circuits read, or any job where the diagram is a scavenger hunt. Increase the minutes to the diagnosis you promise. If the promise is 'we identify the failed part or we tell you it is not worth repairing,' make sure a typical visit of yours actually finishes inside the minutes you typed.
Miles matter more when the ticket is a single machine and the part comes tomorrow. A long drive for a diagnosis you then credit away is a good way to work all day and fund gasoline. Set the mileage rate from your records. The IRS standard rate, confirmed on IRS.gov for the year you are in, is only a cross-check. The $0.70 default is not that rate.
Apply margin as a share of the price, then the after-hours multiplier if you run nights, then round to $5. A Saturday appliance route is often 1× if Saturday is a normal day for you. Do not use the multiplier as a mood. Use it when the visit sits outside the hours you already priced into the wage.
Service call fee vs trip charge vs diagnostic fee
In appliance repair the service call and the diagnostic fee are almost the same product, because the diagnosis is the visit and the repair often waits on a part. Calling it a trip charge and then spending forty minutes with a meter is how customers decide you billed them to walk in.
Say what the fee buys: travel, access to the machine, and a diagnosis. If you also haul the refrigerator out and the floor needs protection, those minutes are on-site time, not a vague extra. If you do not install the part on the same visit, do not let the fee's name imply that the machine will be running before you leave.
A pure trip charge with zero diagnostic minutes is rare in this trade and usually feels like a hook. You can still model it by setting on-site time to zero. Most shops should not. The customer hired you to know what failed, not merely to arrive.
Brand-authorized programs sometimes dictate the fee language and the credit rule. This calculator will not pretend to know a manufacturer's program. If a program sets the customer price, use this page to see whether that price covers your loaded hour. If it does not, the gap is a business problem with the program, not a reason to invent a higher 'average' on a public page.
Should the fee apply toward the repair?
Appliance customers expect the service call to be credited when they approve the repair. That expectation is common. It is still a choice. The toggle adds the credit language and does not subtract the fee from itself. When the part arrives and you return, decide whether the return drive is inside the original fee, inside the repair, or a second trip. This form prices one visit.
Crediting the fee and also eating the return trip is two discounts. If your closing rate is high and the repair labor is healthy, you can afford the first. You should know the cost of the second. Price return travel with the same formula: it is drive time, maybe shorter on-site time, and miles, at your margin. Save a link.
If the customer declines the repair, the fee is the only revenue on the ticket. That is the moment the fee has to stand on its own. Pricing it as a token you always waive means declined repairs are unpaid diagnoses. Some shops accept that. Most should look at the break-even number on the card before they do.
Defaults are illustrative starting points. Enter your own costs. Nothing on this page is a market average, a survey, or a recommended price for your city. Appliance placeholders are a $26 wage, $22 overhead per hour, and 30 minutes on site. Compare them with the generic calculator if you want the unbranded starting point, then replace both with your books.