For trades owners running crews and doing $500K–$5M a year

Free Gift: Get our Skilled Trades Profit Check

The Skilled Trades Profit Check

1Your profitable hourly rate4 numbers, 2 minutes
2Your business scored vs. the benchmarksmostly pre-filled from Step 1
Free · For HVAC, plumbing, electrical & other crew-based trades doing $500K–$5M
Step 1 of 2 · Your hourly rate

What should you actually charge?

Four numbers you already know off the top of your head. Best estimates are fine. This works out the rate you bill for tech time; parts and equipment get marked up on top.

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Our assumptions: 25% payroll extras, 65% of paid hours billed, 15% profit target These are typical for shops your size. Open this only if you know your numbers are different.
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Charge at least $0 per billed tech-hour

Your profitable rate

Where every billed hour goes

Labor Overhead Profit

Read this before you raise your prices

    Step 2 of 2 · Your whole business

    Your rate prices the next job. This scores the whole company.

    We already estimated your revenue, labor cost, and truck count from Step 1, so most of the work is done. Adjust anything you know for sure, add the rest, and get your benchmark score. Use your most recent full year.

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    Short on time? You can skip this and send just your rate below.
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    Your benchmark score: —

    Where the money is hiding

      Get your full Profit Report, plus the reusable rate spreadsheet

      Send your results to Bredberg CPA, then book a 20-minute call where I'll walk you through your Profit Report: what your numbers mean for your pricing, your margins, and what you take home. You'll also get the Excel version of the rate calculator to reuse on every bid.

      Free, no obligation. Prefer to grab a time now? Book a free consultation  ·  or call (269) 482-4065.

      © 2026 Bredberg CPA, PLLC · Bronson, MI · (269) 482-4065 · Financial benchmarking for the skilled trades

      What's in the Skilled Trades Profit Check?

      We've helped 3 businesses each improve their annual profitability by $50,000. Not by finding them more customers, but by fixing the numbers underneath: pricing, labor, and margins.

      The Profit Check is the same diagnosis we run for paying clients, packaged so you can run it yourself in about four minutes.

      Enter numbers you already know off the top of your head, and here's what you'll walk away with:

      Your Profitable Hourly Rate - The exact rate your costs require you to charge per billed tech-hour, built from your own wage, overhead, and billable hours. Takes four numbers and about two minutes.

      Your Pricing Gap in Real Dollars - If you tell us what you charge now, we show you what the gap is costing you per year. For most shops it's a five-figure number they've never seen before.

      Your Benchmark Score - Your whole business graded against healthy numbers for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies: labor, materials, margins, revenue per truck, and recurring revenue. You'll see exactly which metrics are leaking money and which are dialed in.

      Your Slow-Season Cash Reserve Target - The dollar amount to have banked so shoulder-season months stop being a cash crunch, plus how much to set aside monthly to get there.

      Hey, I'm Mitch 👋

      Here's what you need to know about me:

      I'm Mitch Bredberg, CPA and founder of Bredberg CPA, and I've spent my time as a firm owner inside the books of trades companies doing $500K to $5M a year: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other crew-based shops. From that seat I've seen the same pattern over and over: owners running hard, billing plenty, and then handing the IRS tens of thousands more than they legally owe because nobody built them a real tax strategy.

      My work is structuring things like entity elections, vehicle and equipment depreciation, and owner pay so more profit stays with the owner, and then making sure the business underneath is producing profit worth protecting.

      It works: we've helped 3 businesses each improve their annual profitability by $50,000.

      But tax strategy can only protect margin you're actually earning, and too many trades owners underprice it away before I ever see the return, and that's why I built the:

      Profit Check - so you can see the rate your costs actually require, and exactly where your margins stand, in about four minutes.

      Mitch Bredberg, CPA

      Get Your Skilled Trades Profit Check Sent To Your Inbox

      © 2026 Bredberg CPA, PLLC

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