Guides
How to price and run the work
Written to be useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us. Worked examples with every number shown, and honest caveats where the honest answer is “measure your own”.
Estimating
How to estimate a paint job
Measure, apply a production rate, load your labor, add materials and overhead, then set margin. A full worked example with every number shown.
Read →Production rates
Why published production rates will not price your jobs correctly, how to measure yours by task in four weeks, and how to use them without blending them away.
Read →Pricing interior work
Why trim and doors are usually most of the labor on an interior repaint, how to handle prep and occupied homes, and what to put on the estimate.
Read →Pricing exterior work
Substrate condition, access and height, weather risk and washing — the four things that decide whether an exterior job makes money.
Read →Bidding commercial work
What changes when you move from residential repaints to commercial bids: the packet, the schedule, retention, prevailing wage and who actually pays you.
Read →Reading a bid packet
Where the scope actually hides in a commercial bid document, which pages to read in which order, and the four things that most often get missed.
Read →Quoting cabinets
Why cabinets are priced per door and drawer rather than by square foot, what the prep actually involves, and where cabinet jobs lose money.
Read →Money
Markup vs margin
A 50% markup is a 33% margin. Why the two get confused, what it costs over a year, and the one formula that fixes it permanently.
Read →Overhead
What counts as overhead, how to work out your overhead rate from last year's numbers, and the two ways to recover it on every job.
Read →Job costing
How to compare quoted against actual by task, what the comparison tells you that a profit figure does not, and why it has to happen during the job.
Read →Numbers to watch
Six measures that change decisions — close rate, average job, hours variance, gross margin by service, overhead rate and revenue per field hour.
Read →Raising your prices
How to tell whether you are underpriced, how much to move, what to say, and why a falling close rate after a price rise is usually the point.
Read →How to pay crews
The trade-offs between hourly, piece rate and salary for painting crews, what each one quietly incentivises, and why any of them needs measured production rates.
Read →Selling
Following up on estimates
Most unanswered quotes are not rejections. A simple follow-up sequence, what to say, and why speed of the first quote matters more than any of it.
Read →Getting leads
Repeat and referral work, reviews, local search, and paid leads — ranked by what they actually cost per job won rather than per lead.
Read →Winning more estimates
Speed, how the document looks, showing the customer the result, and the three things that decide a close rate more than price does.
Read →Running the work
Change orders
Why unwritten extras are the most common way a profitable job becomes a break-even one, and a process that takes two minutes on site.
Read →Deposits & payments
What a deposit is actually for, how to size it against your material outlay, and how to structure draws so you are never funding the customer.
Read →Scheduling crews
Scheduling around weather and dry time, sequencing so a rained-out day has somewhere to go, and why the crew needs to see the schedule themselves.
Read →What goes in a contract
The clauses that prevent the arguments painters actually have: scope, coats, prep, exclusions, color approval, payment, completion and change orders.
Read →Hiring painters
Where painters actually come from, how to assess skill in a half-day rather than an interview, and why the first week decides whether they stay.
Read →And the calculators
Where a guide explains a calculation, there is usually a free tool that performs it — paint quantity, wall area, labor cost, markup and margin, your hourly rate, and whether a finished job made money.
If you’d rather not run these by hand
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running. The guides stay free either way.