Pressure washing businesses
You charge by the square foot. You pay by the hour.
You quote by the square foot and you pay by the hour, and almost nobody in this trade puts those two numbers next to each other — which is why the published average net margin is 6.8%. Waterline tells you what to charge from your own costs, checks it against what people round here actually pay, and then shows you which of the jobs you have done actually paid. 14 days free, no card.
What it looks like
One truck, one week: a $25,000 rig, $1,500 a month of running costs, five eight-hour days at the 65% of the day this trade really spends washing.
| Job | Size | Charged | Cost | Kept | An hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tate roof | 1,600 | $480 | $489.55 | $-9.55 | $59.63 |
| Hanson concrete | 900 | $120 | $121.63 | $-1.63 | $60.00 |
| Beasley house wash | 2,000 | $525 | $233.12 | $291.88 | $136.96 |
| Cullman Auto concrete | 3,200 | $640 | $248.32 | $391.68 | $156.73 |
That week kept 38.1% of $1,765. The trade average is about 6.8%; a well-run business aims at 20–35%.
Those figures are worked out by the same code you would be running. Yours will look nothing like them -- that is rather the point. The trade figures are from HouseCall Pro, HomeGuide, Jobber and FieldCamp, 2026.
Start
What it does
It tells you what to charge, from your own costs.
Pick the surface, put the square feet in, say how far away it is. It works out how long the job really takes, what those hours cost you, and what to charge to keep the margin you want -- then checks that against what people round here actually pay and against the least you will leave the yard for. It shows you all three and tells you which one won.
Your numbers beat its numbers, always.
It starts with the going rate for each surface because a new business has to start somewhere. Put your own rate in and yours is what it quotes -- and if your rate does not cover the job it says so in money: not “consider raising your prices”, but “that is $39.25 out of your pocket to do it”.
It costs the rig by the hour, because that is how it wears out.
Commercial gear lasts something like 1,500 to 2,500 working hours, so a $25,000 setup is about $12.50 every hour it runs. Almost nobody puts that on a job, and over a season it is the difference between a business and a hobby. Costed over years instead, a busy operator undercounts it and a quiet one overcounts it.
It knows most of your day is not billable.
Driving, setting up, unreeling hose, finding a tap, tearing down. None of it is on an invoice and all of it is paid for by the jobs that are. Everything your business costs is carried by the part of the day with the wand in your hand -- which is why an optimistic guess there is the commonest way to underprice.
Then it tells you which jobs actually paid.
Write up what you charged and how long it took, and the book sorts every job worst first: what it cost, what you kept, what the hour really paid. A $480 roof that ate eight hours is not a $480 job, and nothing else on your screen will tell you that.
What it is not
- It is not scheduling software and it is not invoicing. It does not replace Jobber or Housecall Pro, it does not route your day and it never sends a bill.
- It does not talk to your customers. Nothing here goes to anybody else, ever.
- It does not price by mix ratio. Chemical goes in as what you spend a month, not gallons of SH per job -- that is more accurate and nobody keeps it up, so it would be accurate and empty.
- It is not a one-off calculator. Those ask you to guess at your costs once and then forget them. This works from the jobs you actually did, so the price it gives you next month is built on this month.
The rest of the JTS tools
One trade each, and the same idea every time: one number you have never had, worked out from what you already know.