We use cookies to keep you signed in and to see what's working and what breaks. No advertising cookies, nothing sold. Details in our Cookie Policy.

Ontario

Pricing construction work in Ontario

Most contractors price off a number they inherited from the last outfit they worked for. These guides work out what an hour of your time actually costs once overhead, WSIB and unbillable days are in it, what your win rate is telling you about that number, and how to write assumptions that survive the argument about extras.

Try this on a real business

Open a seeded business in your trade. Nine jobs on the pipeline, a quote sent and viewed, a deposit paid, an invoice overdue, and a holdback on the current month.

Open the demo business

No card, no form. Sign in later and everything you built stays on the same account.

19 guides on this

How to run the businessWhere work is startingA live feed of Ontario employers who just pulled a building permit or won a contract, filtered to your trade. A permit is earlier than a job ad: read the signal like an estimator, track it in one click, and get a weekly heads-up by email.How to run the businessSole prop or incorporateThree paths priced on one screen: $100 for an Ontario sole proprietorship, $400 for an Ontario corporation, $300 federal, with the government filing fees inside each number. Fill the whole registration in, right to the review screen, before any account is needed.How to run the businessAssumptions you can defendEvery argument about a quote is two people remembering a conversation. Two short paragraphs on the quote itself, scope and exclusions, turn that into a comparison of documents.How to run the businessEvery job on one boardAsk a contractor what they are chasing and you get three jobs and a pause. The pause is where a quote sits for five weeks. One board with the money on each column, and a fifteen minute weekly habit.How to run the businessWin rate and your priceA win rate is a score, not a diagnosis. Put the size of what you lose next to the size of what you win, read the reasons you lost, and check what the wins actually made before you come down on price.How to run the businessSend your own quoteMost contractors who price well already have a spreadsheet that took years to get right. Software arrives and asks them to abandon it. Upload the file instead, have the lines read out of it, and choose whether the client opens your document or the platform version.How to run the businessKnow if they read itAn evening on a price, then silence, and no way to tell whether it landed in spam or was read and rejected. Send the proposal as a page instead of an attachment and it reports back: what they read, for how long, and what they skipped.How to run the businessGet on GC bid listsThere is no register to sign and no form to fill. Work arrives because somebody at a builder has your name in front of them. Find the person, send them something worth keeping, and be able to answer the prequalification package when it comes.After you qualifyBid ReadinessPrequalification packages, bid documents, bonding, estimating, and how construction companies actually get work.How to run the businessStart your business in OntarioThe eight setup stages in order, from incorporation through CRA, WSIB and licensing to bid ready: walk the three-step wizard to a live name check and an all-in filing price with government fees included, free and with no account, nothing filed until you authorize and pay.How to run the businessWe file it for youOne checkbox hands over the Articles of Incorporation and the four CRA program accounts. See the exact wording you authorize, which steps stay yours, what the all-in price covers, and the one panel every number lands in afterwards.How to run the businessWhat an hour costs youThe wage is roughly half what a worker costs. Add the employer side, the truck, the tools and the insurance, divide it across the hours you can actually invoice, and get a floor under your rate before the quote goes out.How to run the businessChange orders that get paidThe extra was agreed in a hallway and refused three months later. Raise it in a minute, send it to the client from your own business, and let them approve it where they read it, so the yes has a time stamp on it.How to run the businessCharge for the estimateSomebody wants a boiler sized or a panel schedule laid out, and what they are buying is your judgement. Put the design fee on the quote as its own line, credited against the contract, and make paying it a single tap.How to run the businessRun it from ClaudeBy year three the estimating has become the job and the billing waits for Saturday. Connect AEC Stack to Claude and the errands around the estimate happen by asking, from the van, with nothing changed until you confirm it.How to run the businessBrand, website, documentsThe decision takes a sentence. The admin that follows takes a fortnight: a logo, a colour picked in a hurry, a website that never gets finished, and documents written the night before a builder asks for them. One press produces all three, in one brand.How to run the businessHow much to chargePrice one real job end to end: every cost on its own line, markup you set on purpose, Ontario HST applied for you, holdback split into what you bill now and what waits, and one list of every quote out with its status and value. Demo business, no signup.How to run the businessGoing independent, pricedWSIB, CPP at both halves, income tax, HST after $30,000, insurance and plates all arrive together. Add up your real monthly overhead, run it through a six-month cash forecast, and get the number that has to go on top of your rate.How to run the businessInvoice and get paid on timeBuild the invoice straight from an accepted quote, with HST at 13 percent and the 10 percent Construction Act holdback computed for you. Send it with a timestamped record, log partial cheques, and put every held-back dollar on a countdown.

Count it instead of estimating it

Hourly rate calculatorOverhead, billable days and the wage you want in. The hourly rate that pays for all three.Free, no signup.Markup and margin calculatorAdd twenty percent to your costs and you keep sixteen point seven. Enter one job and see the price, the profit, both percentages, and what the mix-up is worth in dollars.Free, no signup.
Every calculator

The rest of the Ontario library

Finding construction work in OntarioBidding and prequalification in OntarioChange orders and extras in OntarioGetting paid on Ontario constructionConstruction holdback in OntarioConstruction liens in OntarioHST for Ontario contractorsConstruction bookkeeping in Ontario
Every guideThe whole Ontario libraryHow to run the business