How to calculate a service call fee
Load the hour before you price the visit. An HVAC wage might be $32 in this form, and a 30% burden turns that into $41.60 of labor. Burden here means payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and benefits, not a guess about what other shops charge. If your helpers are on the truck for a no-cool call, they are not in this single-tech formula. Price the second person in the repair, or raise the wage field to the crew cost you actually send.
Overhead per hour starts at $30 on this page because an HVAC truck often carries more than a ladder and a meter: vacuum pump, recovery machine, torches, and a refrigerant inventory you have to track. That $30 is not a survey of van cost. Take last year's truck, tools, software, phones, and office, subtract anything you already count in the mileage rate, and divide by billable hours. If the number is $18 or $45, type that. The fee should move when the truth moves.
Drive time plus the diagnostic block is the visit. Thirty minutes on site is enough for a capacitor, a filter, and a conversation. It is tight for a system that needs superheat, subcool, and a drain you cannot see from the driveway. If your service call promises a real diagnosis, raise the on-site minutes until they match the promise. If it promises only arrival and a quick look, lower them. The formula does not know the difference. You do.
Miles times cost per mile sits on top of the time cost. Attic calls and rooftop units do not change the mileage math, but they do change the minutes. Do not hide a 20-minute ladder climb inside a fee you still describe as a 30-minute visit. Check IRS.gov if you want the standard mileage rate as a cross-check, then keep the figure that matches your fuel and depreciation.
Break-even is time plus vehicle. Divide by one minus your margin. A 20% margin is not a 20% markup. After hours, a no-cool on a Sunday is the reason the multiplier exists. At 2×, you are not pretending the refrigerant costs more. You are pricing the fact that the tech is not at dinner. Round the result to the nearest $5 for the quote, and keep the exact price visible so the office and the tech are not arguing about a rounding surprise.
Service call fee vs trip charge vs diagnostic fee
In HVAC these three phrases get stapled to the same work order and then mean different things to the homeowner. A trip charge, said strictly, is the van in the driveway. A diagnostic fee is the test: temperatures, pressures, controls, and a written or spoken cause. A service call fee is the bundle most residential shops actually sell on the first visit.
The painful version is a 'free estimate' on a replacement that somehow became a paid diagnostic when the customer only wanted a repair, or the reverse. Decide which product you sell before the phone rings. If the fee includes recovery and a leak search, the on-site minutes and the customer line have to be allowed to say more than 'we looked at it.' If the fee stops at 'we arrived and identified the failed part,' stop the minutes there and quote the rest as repair labor in the labor calculator.
Maintenance agreements sometimes set the diagnostic fee to zero and still have a real cost. This calculator will not model the agreement. If you waive the fee for members, the membership price has to carry the visits you no longer charge. That is a different product than a one-time service call.
Use the same words on the phone, on the card, and on the invoice. The line under the result is written so a tech can read it without inventing a policy in the hallway.
Should the fee apply toward the repair?
Crediting an HVAC service call toward the repair is popular because the repair is often larger than the visit, and because homeowners repeat a competitor's 'we'll waive it if we do the work.' The toggle records that policy in the sentence. It does not discount the calculated fee.
If you credit the full fee, the repair's labor and parts have to absorb the drive and the diagnosis. A capacitor swap can be smaller than the trip. Waiving $110 on a $180 repair is a different margin than waiving it on a blower motor. Know which jobs can carry the credit before you promise it on every call. You can also credit the fee only above a certain repair total. This form will not compute that rule. It will keep the sentence honest for the simple case.
Not crediting the fee is easier to explain on a system you quoted for replacement and the customer declined. You were paid to find out. The replacement quote is a new sale. Mixing 'free estimate' language into a paid diagnostic is how that conversation goes sour. Say which one you did.
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. The HVAC starting points are a $32 wage, $30 of overhead per hour, and 30 minutes on site. Burden, drive, miles, mileage rate, and margin stay on the generic starting points until you change them.