Guides
What to put in a roofing contractor business package without the jargon
Roofing contractor services structured as a menu: the five job families, what each one demands of a crew, and how to turn them into packages that hold.
What to take away
- A service menu is a capacity decision written as a price list. Every line you add commits crew days, kit and a documentation habit.
- Five job families cover almost everything a residential and light commercial roofer sells. They differ in access, risk, scheduling and how they get paid.
- A package is only real when its boundary is written. What is included, what is excluded, and what turns into a change order.
- Advertise the method and the inspection, not an outcome you cannot support before you have seen the roof.
Business guidance only. Roof systems, structural conditions and access vary, and technical decisions belong with qualified people and with the manufacturer's own installation instructions.
The five job families
| Family | Typical trigger | What it demands | How it gets paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection and condition report | A sale, a claim, an owner's doubt | Time, a camera, a writing habit | Fixed fee, fast |
| Repair | A leak or visible damage | Diagnosis, small crew, fast dispatch | On completion, small |
| Replacement | Age, storm, a failed system | Full crew, staging, disposal | Deposit plus stages |
| Maintenance and service agreements | An owner managing an asset | Scheduling discipline, records | Recurring, invoiced on terms |
| Restoration under a claim | An insured loss | Documentation, patience, scope control | Slow, gated by the carrier |
Most new firms should open with two adjacent families and add a third only when the first two run without the owner in the middle.
What each family actually costs you
Price is downstream of this. Before a line goes on the menu, answer four questions about it.
- How many crew days does one sale consume, from first call to final invoice?
- What equipment and materials does it tie up, and for how long?
- Which season does it fill?
- What paperwork does it produce, and who chases the money?
Four Cost Questions Before Pricing
- Crew days including travel and setup
- Kit locked up and for how long
- What can go wrong and who fixes it
- Paperwork generated and who produces it
A repair looks cheap until you count the drive time and the second visit. A maintenance agreement looks small until you notice it fills the shoulder seasons when the replacement crews are idle. Neither of those facts appears on a price list.
Typical figures for one sale, in residential and light commercial work:
- Inspection and condition reporthalf a crew day for one inspector, plus report writing.
- Repairone to two crew days, and a return visit is common.
- Replacementa full crew of four to six for one to three days, plus disposal.
- Maintenance and service agreementsone to two crew days per visit, spread across the year.
- Restoration under a claimfour to ten crew days, gated by the carrier's approvals.
Your loaded labour rate and local material prices turn those days into dollars.
The rule that keeps a menu honest
Never sell a job type your crew has not finished under supervision. That single rule prevents most of the damage a growing roofing firm does to itself.
It has an unpopular consequence. Some inquiries get declined, or referred out, while the capability is built. Declining is cheaper than a callback on a roof nobody on the truck has installed before.
Turning services into packages
A package is a service with the arguments removed in advance. It has four written parts.
- The scope, listed in the order the work happens.
- The exclusions, written as plainly as the inclusions.
- The price, split into stages, with the trigger for each payment.
- The change order mechanismwhat a discovered condition does to the price and who signs it.
Four Parts of a Package
- Triggercondition that fits
- Inclusionswork, materials, cleanup
- Exclusionsdeck, structural, other trades
- Change mechanismwho authorizes, at what rate
The fourth part is the one firms leave out, and it is the one that decides whether a discovered condition is a conversation or a fight. Write it before you need it.
Here is a sample package for a replacement job.
- Scope
- remove the existing covering, inspect the deck, install underlayment, drip edge and architectural shingles to the manufacturer's instructions, then haul away debris.
- Not included
- decking beyond the stated allowance, chimney counterflashing, gutter work, and permit fees.
- Payment
- a deposit at signing, a progress payment when the deck is exposed, and the balance after final inspection.
- Change order
- any condition not listed above is priced and approved in writing before work continues.
Allowances, the honest version
Roofing has a problem no other trade has quite so sharply: you cannot see the deck until the covering is off. There are two honest ways to handle it.
State an allowance. The quote includes replacement of a stated quantity of decking, and anything beyond it is priced at a rate written into the agreement. The customer knows the mechanism before the tear off starts.
Here is wording you can adapt. 'This price includes replacement of up to eight 4 by 8 sheets of roof decking. Each additional sheet is billed at the per-sheet rate in Schedule B.'
That rate has two inputs, and you can check both this month: the sheet price on your supplier's quote and your loaded crew hour. A sheet that takes half a crew hour to fit prices at the sheet cost plus half your hourly rate. Write the finished number into Schedule B and it stops being an argument.
Or price the inspection separately, open a small area, and quote from what you found. Slower, and it makes an accurate fixed price possible.
Both are defensible. What is not defensible is a fixed price with no allowance and no mechanism, because it forces you to choose between eating the cost and surprising the customer.
What you may say in the advertising
A package description is an advertising claim. The FTC advertising guidance for small business states the requirement in one line: you need a reasonable basis for a claim before you run it.
In roofing that rules out three tempting things: a price for work of unknown extent, a comparative claim about another firm's system, and a performance promise that belongs to the manufacturer, not you.
What you can advertise is the inspection, the method, the documentation the customer receives, and the terms of your own workmanship warranty. Those are yours, and you can support every one of them.
Safety is a menu constraint, not a footnote
Some jobs your crew can reach safely and some they cannot, and that is a service decision. Steep slopes, unusual heights and difficult access change the equipment and the plan.
Safety Constraints on the Menu
- Steep slopes change equipment and plan
- Unusual heights change equipment and plan
- Difficult access changes equipment and plan
- Read OSHA guidance with a safety adviser
The OSHA guidance on fall protection in residential construction lists available methods. It is explicit that the employer must meet the requirements that apply on site.
The specific duty is a number: protect workers at six feet or more above a lower level, under 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(13). Read it with a qualified safety adviser, then decide which jobs your menu accepts.
A menu line you cannot staff safely is not a service. It is an accident with a price attached.
Records are part of the product
Every family in the table produces evidence, and on the paid-by-a-third-party families the evidence is most of the value. Photographs in a fixed order. Dated readings and observations. The scope as sold, and the scope as performed, with the difference explained.
Keep the financial side straight alongside it. The IRS guidance on the records a business should keep is the baseline for how long and in what form.
Staffing the menu you wrote
Each family needs a different person at the front of it. Inspection needs somebody who writes clearly. Repair needs a diagnostician. Replacement needs a foreman who can run a site. Service agreements need a coordinator who does not lose a schedule.
Look up what those roles cost where you operate with the BLS occupational employment and wage tables, which publish estimates by occupation and metropolitan area. Then check whether you can staff the menu you drew at prices your pricing supports. If it is not, cut a line rather than underpay the role.
The demand side of that decision, and which families your local market actually buys, is set out in the roofing contractor startup and market guide.
Two menu shapes that both work
A narrow menu sells one family deeply. Every quote uses the same scope language, the crew repeats the same sequence, and the estimating gets accurate quickly. The weakness is exposure: one market shift, one supplier problem, one seasonal collapse, and there is nothing else to sell.
Two Menu Shapes
Narrow Menu
- Focus
- one family deeply
- Strength
- accurate estimating
- Weakness
- market exposure
- Example
- single service line
Paired Menu
- Focus
- two sharing crew
- Strength
- fills shoulder seasons
- Weakness
- needs coordination
- Example
- replacement plus maintenance
A paired menu sells two families that share a crew and a season but not a customer trigger. Replacement plus maintenance is the common pairing, because the maintenance visits fill weeks the replacement calendar cannot. Inspection plus repair is the other, because one produces the other.
What does not work is a menu assembled from whatever the last three callers asked for. That is a record of your inbox, not a decision, and it produces a firm that is mediocre at five things while a specialist takes the work it wanted.
Decide which shape you are running and write it at the top of the menu document. Everyone who quotes should be able to say, in one sentence, what this firm sells and what it sends elsewhere.
Reviewing the menu
Once a season, take each line and ask three things: did it earn a full crew day, did it generate rework, and did anyone have to invent the paperwork. A line that fails two of the three is a candidate for removal, not for a marketing push.
Common questions
How many services should a new firm offer?
Fewer than feels comfortable. Two families, done to a standard you can prove, beats five you can only sometimes deliver.
Should packages have names?
Names help a customer compare, and they help your own team quote consistently. They become a problem when the name promises something the scope does not contain, so write the scope first and name it afterwards.
Can I offer a maintenance agreement in year one?
Yes, if you can guarantee the visits. An agreement you miss is worse than one you never sold, because it converts a paying customer into a complaint with a contract behind it.
How do I handle a customer who wants only part of a package?
Split it and reprice it honestly. Removing a step from a fixed price while keeping the price is how a package stops meaning anything.
