Ask ten electricians what they mark up materials and you'll get ten answers and at least two arguments. That's not because nine of them are wrong. It's because markup isn't a magic number — it's covering a specific list of real costs, and the right number depends on the job, the item, and how you contracted.
What the markup is actually for
The price on the supply-house ticket is not what the material costs you. By the time a breaker is installed and warrantied, you've also paid for:
- Procurement time.Pricing the material, ordering it, driving to will-call, checking the delivery against the packing slip, running returns back. That's hours, and hours are your most expensive commodity.
- Carrying the money.You pay the supply house on their terms and get paid on your customer's schedule — often weeks later, sometimes with retainage held on top. In between, you're the bank.
- Handling and storage. Truck stock, shelf space, shrinkage, the material that gets damaged between counter and install.
- Waste and mistakes. Offcuts, the wrong part opened and unreturnable, the fitting that rolls under the slab.
- Warranty. When a part fails in eleven months, you replace it — the part and the trip — for free. Markup on every part is what funds the ones that come back.
Charge cost with no markup and you're not being generous — you're paying for all of the above out of your labor rate, which means your labor rate is quietly lower than you think.
What subs commonly charge
There's no official rate, and anyone who quotes you “the industry number” is guessing. In practice you'll hear everything from around ten percent to fifty or more, and the pattern behind the spread is consistent: small-ticket items carry higher markup, big-ticket gear carries less. Marking up a $4 connector ten percent doesn't cover the cost of writing it down; marking up a five-figure gear order fifty percent prices you out of the job. That's why a lot of shops run a sliding scale — heavier markup on the small stuff, thinner on quoted equipment — instead of one flat number.
Cost-plus vs. fixed price
Cost-plus (or T&M)means you bill actual materials cost plus a stated markup. It's transparent — the customer may ask to see receipts, and that's fair. The catch is that transparency runs on capture: you can only bill “cost plus” on costs you can show. Every counter ticket that never made it into the job's ledger is material you installed and ate. On cost-plus work, a lost receipt isn't a bookkeeping annoyance — it's a direct write-off.
Fixed priceburies the materials number inside the bid. The markup is invisible to the customer but just as real — and now the risk is yours. If copper moves between bid day and purchase day, the difference comes out of your pocket, not theirs. The defense is the same ledger: tracking actual materials cost per job tells you whether your bid allowances still match reality, or whether you're pricing next month's work with last year's numbers.
Whatever you charge, know your cost
Every markup strategy has the same foundation: the real cost number. A markup applied to a guess is a guess. If half your tickets live in a dashboard and the other half in an inbox, your “cost” is whatever you remembered at invoice time — and memory always rounds down. RevnuPros builds the per-job materials ledger automatically from photographed receipts, so the number you're marking up is the number you actually spent. The markup debate is worth having; having it on top of real costs is what makes it worth anything.
Let RevnuPros keep the materials ledger for you.
Snap the ticket at the counter — the AI reads the supplier, invoice number, and line items, and files the purchase to its job with unbilled material flagged.