A customer opens a time and material invoice and sees a line that reads 8.77 hrs @ $96/hr. The call that follows is about the rate first, and the hours second.
An electrical contractor time and material rate sheet settles the first half of that call before anyone picks up a tool. It is the schedule of prices — labor by classification, premium time, material markup, equipment, and the charges nobody thinks about until they land on a bill.
The rate sheet is the easy half. It is a document you write once, get signed, and stop arguing about. This page gives you a complete one, plus the arithmetic behind every number on it.
What's here:
- A finished rate sheet you can copy into a spreadsheet today
- How to build a billed labor rate from a wage, with every input visible
- Premium time, material markup tiers, and the charges customers challenge
- The wording that makes the sheet an exhibit instead of an email
- The half a rate sheet cannot cover, and what covers it
What a time and material rate sheet is (and what it is not)
A T&M rate sheet is the price list you hand the customer before the work starts. It fixes what an hour costs, what materials get marked up, and what else is billable — so the only thing left to establish later is what actually happened on site.
It is not the T&M tag. The tag is the daily field record of hours and work performed, signed on site. The sheet says journeyman = $96/hr; the tag says a journeyman was there for eight hours and what he did.
It is not your estimate. An estimate prices a scope. A rate sheet prices the units, then lets the scope be whatever the job turns out to be — which is the whole reason T&M exists.
And it is not your internal cost buildup. More on that below, because handing over the wrong document is the most expensive mistake on this page.
The rate sheet, filled in (copy this)
Below is a complete sheet. The dollar figures are example arithmetic, not a market quote. The straight time rates are example market prices; the overtime and double time columns are derived from the wage and burden inputs shown in the next section. Replace every figure with your own numbers before you send anything.
Header block
Every sheet carries these fields at the top. Missing ones are how a sheet gets treated as a suggestion.
- Contractor legal name, address, state license number
- Customer / GC name, project name, project address
- Rate sheet number and revision (
RS-2026-04) - Effective date and expiration date
- Prepared by, and a signature block for the customer
Labor rates by classification
Example rates, not a market quote. They come from the $34.00 wage / $92,254 annual cost / 1,800 billable-hour build-up in the next section, plus the market uplift explained there. Replace before sending.| Classification | Straight time | Overtime | Double time |
|---|
| Apprentice, 1st–2nd period | $58.00 | $69.00 | $80.00 |
| Apprentice, 3rd–4th period | $72.00 | $86.00 | $100.00 |
| Journeyman electrician | $96.00 | $116.00 | $136.00 |
| Foreman | $112.00 | $136.00 | $161.00 |
| General foreman | $124.00 | $151.00 | $178.00 |
| Master electrician / licensed supervisor | $135.00 | $165.00 | $196.00 |
| Service technician (truck and stock included) | $128.00 | $150.00 | $172.00 |
Straight time applies to the first 8 hours, Monday through Friday. Print your own overtime trigger — some shops bill OT after 8 in a day, some after 40 in a week, and the difference shows up on every long week.
Material, equipment and subcontract markup
| Category | Markup | Note printed on the sheet |
|---|
| Material, invoice cost $0 – $500 | 30% | Applied to net invoice cost after supplier discount |
| Material, $500.01 – $2,500 | 22% |
| Material, $2,500.01 – $10,000 | 15% |
| Material, over $10,000 | 10% | Gear, switchboards, transformers |
| Rented equipment | 15% | Rental invoice attached to the billing |
| Subcontracted work | 10% | Fire alarm, testing, core drilling, trenching |
| Permits and inspection fees | At cost | Copy of the fee receipt attached |
| Customer-supplied material | 0% | No warranty, no returns, no procurement time |
Other billable items
Example figures, built from the same inputs. Your truck cost, your market.| Item | Rate | Basis |
|---|
| Small tools and consumables | 3% of labor | Wire nuts, tape, anchors, blades, bits, fasteners, marking |
| Truck and stock charge | $85.00 / day | Per vehicle on site, project work |
| Trip charge (service calls) | $95.00 | Per dispatch, waived on jobs over 4 hours |
| Minimum call-out, business hours | 2 hours ST | Per electrician dispatched |
| Minimum call-out, after hours | 4 hours OT | Per electrician dispatched |
| Travel, portal to portal | Applicable labor rate | Shop to site, site to shop |
| Mileage, jobs over 40 miles from shop | IRS standard rate | Per vehicle, per mile |
| Per diem | $__ / day / person | Overnight jobs over 60 miles from shop |
| Standby / delay time | Applicable labor rate | Site not ready, other trades, access denied |
| Scissor lift, 19' | $__ / day, $__ / week | Plus delivery and pickup |
| Trencher / core drill / generator | $__ / day | Owned equipment; rentals per markup table |
| Site orientation, badging, drug screening | Applicable labor rate + fee at cost | Per person, per site |
| Restocking of returned customer-directed material | Supplier fee + 0% | Passed through with the credit memo |
The blank rows are the local ones. Set per diem from your actual lodging and meal cost for the area, not a round number. For equipment you own, price it at roughly what a rental house charges for the same unit — a 19' scissor lift you own is commonly billed around $200 a day — and say on the sheet that owned equipment is billed at the sheet rate while rentals carry the markup above.
Terms block — copy as written, change the blanks
- Rates above are effective __/__/____ and expire __/__/____.
- Work is billed at the classification of the person performing it, in
quarter-hour increments.
- Straight time is the first 8 hours worked Monday-Friday. Overtime applies
beyond 8 hours in a day and to all Saturday hours. Double time applies to
Sunday and to holidays observed by the Contractor.
- Premium time is billed by the method stated in the labor rate table.
[Method B - keep this if you pass the premium through: Overtime and double
time rates recover the wage premium and the payroll taxes and insurance on
that premium only; they are not a multiple of the straight time billing
rate.]
[Method A - keep this if you multiply: Overtime is billed at 1.5x and
double time at 2.0x the straight time billing rate.]
- Material is billed at net invoice cost plus the markup shown. Supplier
invoices are available on request for any single item over $______.
- Daily time and material tickets will be presented for signature at the end
of each shift. A ticket not signed within 2 business days, and not disputed
in writing in that period, is deemed accepted.
- Work is authorized up to a not-to-exceed amount of $__________. Contractor
will stop and obtain written authorization before exceeding it.
- Charges not listed above are billed at cost plus 15%, with backup attached.
- Invoices are due net 30. Retainage, if any, is __%.
Item 6 is the one people skip, and it is the item that turns a signed tag into a settled fact. Item 4 is a pick-one — delete the bracket you don't use. If you bill Method B, that line is what keeps a GC's cost engineer from striking your overtime, because it tells them exactly what they are paying for.
How to build a billed labor rate from a wage
A billed rate is four things stacked: the wage, the burden that rides on the wage, the overhead each billable hour has to carry, and profit. Get the stack right and you can defend any number on the sheet line by line.
Below is a worked example for one journeyman. Every input is visible — change them to yours and the answer changes with you.
Step 1: annual cost of one electrician
| Line | Example input | Annual |
|---|
| Base wage | $34.00 × 2,080 hrs | $70,720 |
| Payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUTA) | 8.85% of wages | $6,259 |
| Workers' compensation | $6.50 per $100 of payroll | $4,597 |
| General liability | $1.10 per $100 of payroll | $778 |
| Health and retirement | $700 / month | $8,400 |
| Tools, phone, training, license renewal | — | $1,500 |
| Total annual cost | $92,254 |
Note what is not in there: the truck. This example sheet bills a separate truck and stock charge, so putting the vehicle in the labor rate too would recover it twice.
Pick one place for every cost and leave it there. Double-recovery is the fastest way to lose a rate negotiation once a GC's estimator finds it.
Step 2: billable field hours
You do not get to divide by 2,080. You divide by the hours a customer actually pays for.
| Hours | Example |
|---|
| Paid hours | 2,080 |
| Less PTO and holidays | −96 |
| Less shop time, training, safety meetings | −60 |
| Less warranty, weather, unbilled travel | −124 |
| Billable field hours | 1,800 |
Cost per billable hour: $92,254 ÷ 1,800 = $51.25.
That 1,800 is the number most shops guess at, and the guess is expensive in one direction. Divide the same $92,254 by 2,250 hours instead of 1,800 and the cost per hour comes out at $41.00 rather than $51.25 — every rate built on it lands 20% low. If you have a year of job records, count the hours that reached an invoice and use the real figure.
Step 3: overhead recovery
Overhead is everything that is not field labor or job material — office wages, rent, software, unassigned vehicles, insurance, the owner's non-field time, accounting.
Example: $240,000 of annual overhead ÷ (12 field electricians × 1,800 billable hours) = $11.11 per billable hour.
Cost plus overhead: $51.25 + $11.11 = $62.36 per billable hour.
Step 4: profit
Profit is a margin on the billed rate, not a markup on cost — those are different numbers.
For a 15% net margin: $62.36 ÷ 0.85 = $73.36 per hour.
That $73.36 is your floor, not your price. This example sheet prints $96.00 for a journeyman — a 31% uplift over the floor, which is what covers the hours the model underestimated and what the local market allows. The same 31% uplift is applied to each classification's floor to produce the straight time column above. If the floor comes out above what your market pays, the sheet has told you something useful before a customer did.
Setting the spread between classifications
Run the same four steps for each classification, using that classification's wage. The burden percentages stay the same; the wage and the annual benefit load change.
Do not blend everyone into one shop rate. A blended rate overcharges the customer for apprentice hours and undercharges for foreman hours, and the first person to notice will be the GC comparing your tags to your rate sheet.
A separate service-tech line is worth carrying if you run stocked trucks. The stock, the truck and the callback exposure are all in that rate, which is why the example sheet marks it "truck and stock included" — a customer who sees both a service rate and a truck charge will ask, and they should.
Overtime, after hours, and premium time
Overtime should be billed as the wage premium plus the payroll taxes and insurance that ride on that premium — not as a multiple of your straight-time billing rate. Your overhead and profit do not go up 50% because the clock passed 8 hours.
There are two methods in the field. Print which one you use.
Method A — multiply the billed rate. $96 × 1.5 = $144. Simple, and hard to defend line by line, because it marks up overhead and profit that did not increase. Method B — pass through the premium only. The half-hour of extra wage plus the burden on it. Using the example inputs: half-premium on a $34 wage is $17.00, and payroll taxes (8.85%) + workers' comp (6.50%) + GL (1.10%) add 16.45%, so $17.00 × 1.1645 = $19.80.Overtime rate: $96.00 + $19.80 = $115.80, printed as $116. Double time carries a full extra hour of wage: $34.00 × 1.1645 = $39.59, so $135.59, printed as $136.
Method B is easier to defend, it survives an audit of your tags, and it is what a subcontract exhibit is asking for when it says "premium time at actual cost." Whichever you choose, print the finished dollar figure so nobody has to do arithmetic to check your invoice.
Two more premium lines belong on the sheet if you do the work: a shift differential for second and third shift, and an after-hours minimum. Price the shift differential the same way as overtime — the wage premium plus the burden that rides on it. On the example $34.00 wage, a 10% second-shift premium is $3.40, and the same 16.45% for payroll taxes, comp and GL makes it $3.96. The journeyman line reads $99.96, printed as $100. A four-hour minimum at OT is not a penalty either — it is what it costs to send someone out at 9pm, and it stops being controversial the moment it appears on a signed sheet.
Material markup: tiers, and markup vs. margin
Tier your markup by dollar band. A flat 30% is fine on a $200 device order and indefensible on a $14,000 switchboard, and the customer who catches the second one will re-open every material line you ever billed them.
Markup and margin are not the same number, and mixing them up costs real money.
| Material cost | What you apply | Billed price | Actual gross margin |
|---|
| $100.00 | 15% markup | $115.00 | 13.0% |
| $100.00 | 22% markup | $122.00 | 18.0% |
| $100.00 | 30% markup | $130.00 | 23.1% |
| $100.00 | priced for 30% margin | $142.86 | 30.0% |
To hit a target margin, divide cost by (1 − margin): $100 ÷ 0.70 = $142.86. To apply a markup, multiply: $100 × 1.30 = $130.
State on the sheet whether markup is applied to net invoice cost or list. A customer who later learns you bought at a 40% supplier discount and marked up list will re-open every material line you ever billed them. One printed line — "markup applies to net invoice cost after supplier discount" — removes that.
The line items that start arguments
The charge that starts the argument is always the one that was never printed before the job began. None of these are unusual, and none of them are controversial in advance.
| Charge | Print it like this | What it prevents |
|---|
Two more worth carrying: a per diem line if you travel, and a line for equipment you own, priced as described under the sheet above. An owned-equipment charge is ordinary; discovering that charge for the first time on page 3 of an invoice is not.
Never hand a customer your cost buildup
The four-step arithmetic above is an internal document. It shows your wages, your burden, your overhead and your profit percentage on one page.
The rate sheet is the external document. It shows what an hour costs the customer and nothing about how that number was reached.
This distinction is easy to lose, because most pricing spreadsheets calculate both in the same tab. Keep two files, and name the internal one so nobody can email it by reflex.
The same rule governs your reports. A job labor report that carries a cost rate and a total labor cost column is a job costing tool — useful, and not something to send with an invoice. For what the customer-facing version should look like, there's an annotated sample billing packet — bill rates only, with notes on what stays in the internal report. More on the job costing side is in job costing for electricians.
Make the rate sheet an exhibit, not an email
A rate sheet emailed as a PDF and never acknowledged is a price you hope applies. A rate sheet referenced by a signed document is a price that does apply.
Attach it as Exhibit A to a T&M work authorization or to the subcontract, and reference it by number and revision in the body: "Labor and material are billed per Contractor Rate Sheet RS-2026-04, attached as Exhibit A."
Get the authorization signed before the first hour. The free T&M Billing Backup Kit includes a T&M work authorization form with its own labor bill rate section you can fill in or replace with a reference to your rate sheet, along with a daily field report and a change order log.
On effective dates and increases, decide and print one of these:
- Rates hold for the duration of the job. Simple, customer-friendly, and it will hurt on an 18-month project.
- Rates escalate annually with 30 days written notice. Standard on longer commercial work. Print the notice period.
- Rates hold for work authorized before the effective date; new authorizations use current rates. The middle path, and the one that causes the least friction on multi-phase work.
Prevailing wage: where the sheet changes
On public work your private rate sheet does not apply. Davis-Bacon covers federally funded contracts over $2,000, and most states have their own prevailing wage law with its own threshold and its own wage determinations.
The wage and the fringe are set by the determination, not by you, and both have to appear on certified payroll. Your burden, overhead and profit still build on top — but the base moves, so the billed rate moves with it.
Issue a separate rate sheet for prevailing wage jobs, tied to the specific wage determination number. Reusing your private sheet on public work is how contractors end up back-paying wages and re-issuing a year of certified payroll.
A week of work, priced with the sheet
Example job: 200A service upgrade and panel relocation for a commercial tenant, four days, authorized T&M with a $15,000 not-to-exceed.
| Line | Quantity | Rate | Amount |
|---|
| Journeyman, straight time | 32.00 hrs | $96.00 | $3,072.00 |
| Journeyman, overtime | 6.00 hrs | $116.00 | $696.00 |
| Apprentice, 3rd period, straight time | 32.00 hrs | $72.00 | $2,304.00 |
| Apprentice, 3rd period, overtime | 6.00 hrs | $86.00 | $516.00 |
| Foreman, layout and inspection | 4.00 hrs | $112.00 | $448.00 |
| Labor subtotal | $7,036.00 |
| Small tools and consumables | 3% of labor | $211.08 |
| Truck and stock charge | 4 days | $85.00 | $340.00 |
| Material (gear, conductors, fittings) | cost $4,180.00 | +15% | $4,807.00 |
| Permit | at cost | $310.00 |
| Total | $12,704.08 |
Every number in that table traces to a line on the signed sheet. Nothing appears that the customer had not already agreed to in writing.
That invoice is defensible on price. It is not yet defensible on hours — and that is the other half.
What the rate sheet can't do
A rate sheet proves what an hour costs. It does not prove the hour happened.
Look at the difference between two versions of the same line, on the same job, at the same agreed rate:
Journeyman — 8.77 hrs @ $96.00 = $841.92Journeyman (R. Ramirez) — Thu 7:02a–3:48p — pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing; set and landed feeder to relocated panel — 8.77 hrs @ $96.00 = $841.92Same rate sheet. Same money. The first one invites a phone call; the second one answers it. The customer isn't disputing your price — they're asking what they got, and only the second line tells them.
This is why the sheet and the field record are one system. The sheet settles the rate in advance; the daily record settles the work as it happens; together they leave nothing for anyone to reconstruct from memory 30 days later.
The obstacle is real and worth naming: getting a field electrician to write anything down at the end of a shift. A crew that hears "log your time so I can check on you" writes 8 hrs — electrical forever. A crew that hears "write one line so the customer can't chisel us on work you actually did" writes something usable, because now they're on the same side of the invoice as you.
What "usable" means, practically: one line per person per day, naming the location and the work. Not a paragraph. Rough-in, 2nd floor east, circuits 12–18 is enough. A record written at the end of the shift beats one reconstructed on Friday, because the person writing it still remembers which circuits he landed and which ones he didn't get to. Reconstruction rounds — and it rounds in both directions.
You can run this with the free backup kit forms on a clipboard and a signature at the end of each shift. That is a complete, working system. T&M was billed this way for decades before any of it went on a screen, and a signed paper ticket is still the strongest single document in a billing dispute. (If you'd rather the note get captured on a phone at clock-out and land on a printable customer packet with the bill rate already applied, that is what FieldTimesheet does; it holds a bill rate per job and a free-text note per punch, and it does not do classifications, premium-time categories or cost codes — you still apply those from your rate sheet.)
Either way, the rule is the same: the rate sheet is the agreement, the field note is the evidence, and an invoice that carries both is one the customer can read instead of question. More on assembling the whole package is in T&M billing best practices.
Frequently asked questions
What should be on an electrical contractor's time and material rate sheet?
A complete sheet carries labor rates by classification with straight, overtime and double time columns; material markup by dollar tier; equipment and truck charges; small tools and consumables; travel and minimum call-out; per diem and mileage; permits and subcontract markup; and a terms block with effective dates, ticket signature requirements and a not-to-exceed line.
If a charge can appear on your invoice, it belongs on the sheet. A charge printed in advance is a price; the same charge discovered on an invoice is a surprise.
How do you calculate a billable hourly rate for an electrician?
Take the annual cost of that electrician — wage, payroll taxes, workers' comp, general liability, benefits, tools and training — and divide it by the hours that actually reach an invoice, not by 2,080. Then add overhead per billable hour, then add profit as a margin on the final rate.
Using the example inputs on this page: $92,254 annual cost ÷ 1,800 billable hours = $51.25, plus $11.11 overhead = $62.36, ÷ 0.85 for a 15% margin = $73.36 per hour as the floor.
What's the difference between an electrician's cost rate and bill rate?
The cost rate is what the hour costs you — wage plus burden. The bill rate is what the customer pays, which includes overhead and profit on top.
They belong in different documents. A report showing cost rates and total labor cost is an internal job costing document; sending it to a customer discloses your margin.
How much should you mark up materials on a T&M electrical job?
Tier material markup by dollar band rather than applying one number to every purchase. The example schedule on this page runs 30% under $500, 22% to $2,500, 15% to $10,000, and 10% above that, with rentals at 15% and subcontracted work at 10%.
State whether the markup applies to net or list cost, and pass permits through at cost. Also keep markup and margin straight: 30% markup on $100 of material is a 23.1% gross margin, not 30%.
Do you charge the customer for drive time and supply house runs?
Most commercial T&M contractors bill both drive time and supply house runs, and it is normal — provided both are printed on the rate sheet and signed before the job. Travel is portal to portal at the applicable labor rate; material pickup during the workday is billed the same way.
What causes disputes is not the charge, it's the timing. Nobody argues about a $96 travel hour they agreed to in March; everybody argues about one they meet in June on an invoice. If you want to see what one of those arguments costs in write-offs and slow payment, the invoice dispute arithmetic runs on your own inputs.
Do you bill overtime at time-and-a-half of the billed rate?
You can, but it is the weaker of the two accepted methods, and your sheet has to state which one you use. Multiplying the billed rate by 1.5 marks up overhead and profit that did not increase, and GCs frequently strike it.
The more defensible method bills the wage premium plus the payroll taxes and insurance on that premium. With the example inputs — a $34 wage, 16.45% for taxes, comp and GL — that's $19.80 added to a $96 straight-time rate, so $115.80 rather than $144.
Does the customer have to sign the rate sheet?
The customer does not have to sign the sheet itself, but it only binds them if it is referenced by something they did sign — a T&M work authorization, a subcontract, or a purchase order that names the sheet by number and revision. An emailed PDF that nobody acknowledged is a proposal, not a price.
Attach it as an exhibit, get the authorization signed before the first hour, and require daily ticket signatures with a deadline for written objection.
How often should you update your rate sheet, and does it apply to jobs already in progress?
Once a year is normal, more often if wages or insurance move sharply — and a new sheet does not automatically reprice work that was already authorized. Put an expiration date on every version and a revision number, so there is never a question about which sheet governs.
For work in progress, print one of three rules: rates hold for the duration of the job, rates escalate annually with 30 days written notice, or rates hold for work already authorized while new authorizations use current rates. Any of the three is fine; silence is what causes the fight.