Charging waiting time and variations: the money you're too polite to bill

Charging waiting time and variations is where pump businesses quietly bleed to death. Not on the rate — on the extras. Ninety minutes waiting on the agi. Thirty extra metres of line that wasn't in the quote. A second setup because the chippy wasn't ready. The 6am cancellation that torched a whole day. All real costs. Most operators bill almost none of it.

Why? Too polite. Too busy. And by invoice time, no record — so as far as anyone's concerned, it never happened.

If it isn't written at the time, it's free

The rule is brutal and simple. Anything not written down while it's happening becomes free. Memory won't save you — a week later even you don't trust your own version, and the builder certainly won't. Written on the docket at the time, in front of everyone, it's just a fact of the day.

The good news: waiting time is the easiest thing in the world to log, because you're standing there doing nothing anyway. Truck arrived 6:40. Concrete arrived 8:10. Write it down, note the plant, get the nod from the foreman while the memory's fresh. That's the whole system.

Waiting starts when you arrive

Set the definitions before the job, in your terms. Waiting time starts when you arrive on site ready, not when the concrete shows up. Extra line past the quoted metres has a metre rate. Second setups cost. Cancellation inside the window costs, because your day was already spent. None of this is aggressive — it's just written down before the pour instead of argued about after it.

Builders don't actually hate extras. They hate surprises. A variation flagged on the day — that's another thirty metres of line, mate, it'll be on the docket — and signed at the time, gets paid without a word. The same line appearing on an invoice three weeks later with no signature starts a war you'll lose.

The polite bloke discount

Every unbilled extra is a discount you gave without deciding to. Add it up across a year — the waiting, the extra line, the wrecked afternoons — and plenty of operators are quietly handing out a rate cut they'd never agree to out loud. It's a big part of why blokes can be flat out all week and skint by Friday.

Module 02, Know Your Real Rate, runs the numbers on what an hour actually costs you to exist. Once you know that number, waiting for free stops feeling polite and starts feeling like what it is: paying to stand still.

So: terms set before the job. Everything logged the moment it happens. Signature on the day. Every time, every client, no exceptions for mates. You don't have to be aggressive about it. You just have to be a business about it.