Every cost that feeds your business went up this year. Award wages rose 4.75 per cent from the first pay period after 1 July, super now sits at 12 per cent and rides on top of every one of those higher wages, insurance premiums keep climbing, and materials haven't got cheaper. Each one on its own is absorbable. Stacked together, they quietly compress your margin — and if your prices haven't moved to match, you're doing more work this year to keep less of it.
The instinct most trade business owners have is to hold the line on price and hope volume covers it. It won't. Holding prices flat while costs rise isn't caution — it's a slow decision to earn less, and it's the single most common reason a business can be flat out and busy but not profitable. The real risk in pricing isn't that you raise prices and lose a customer. It's that you don't, and slowly go broke while fully booked.
The fear is bigger than the reality
Almost every owner overestimates how many customers a price rise will cost them. The picture in your head is the client who explodes, walks, and tells everyone you've gone dear. That client exists — one of them, maybe two. What you don't picture is the reality: most people expect prices to go up, because everything in their own life has gone up too. Your customer's power bill, groceries, mortgage and insurance have all risen. A tradesperson putting their rate up in 2026 is not a shock to anyone. It's the least surprising thing that could happen.
The customers you're afraid of losing are, overwhelmingly, the ones you can most afford to lose — the price-shoppers who were only ever with you for the cheapest number and will leave the moment someone underquotes you anyway. Your good customers, the ones who value showing up on time and doing the job right, are not making their decision on a 5 or 8 per cent difference. They're making it on trust. A price rise doesn't dent that. Being cheap was never why they chose you.
How much, and how to say it
Get the amount right first. A price rise that doesn't actually restore your margin means you'll be back doing this again in six months, so work out what your costs really are — the true cost of an hour of your team's time, loaded with super, insurance, vehicles and overhead — and price to a margin you can live on, not to a number that feels safe.
Then, when you tell people, keep it short, clear and unapologetic. Give existing regular customers reasonable notice — a few weeks for a service business — so it doesn't feel like an ambush. Say what's happening in one or two lines: costs have risen, you've held off as long as you sensibly could, and your rates are adjusting from a set date so you can keep doing the work properly. That's the whole message. You don't owe anyone a spreadsheet of your overheads, and you shouldn't grovel — a long, apologetic explanation signals that you're not sure you're worth it, and invites a negotiation you didn't need to have.
Gold nugget. Put the new prices on every new quote first, before you touch a single existing customer. New enquiries have no old price to compare against — they simply see your current rate and either book or don't, and you'll find they book at the same rate they always did. That does two things: it starts protecting your margin immediately on all new work, and it gives you real evidence that the new price is landing fine before you ever have the conversation with your regulars. By the time you tell existing clients, you're not guessing whether the market will wear it. You already know it does.
Who to raise, and by how much
You don't have to move everyone by the same amount on the same day, and you usually shouldn't. New customers get the new price with no conversation. Your best, longest-standing clients — the ones who pay on time and give you the good, repeat work — you might move more gently, or a touch later, because that relationship is worth protecting and they'll notice the courtesy. And the accounts that are all haggle and slow payment and never a referral? That's where a firmer rise does its quiet work. If a marginal customer leaves over a price rise, you've just freed capacity for a better one at a better rate. A price increase isn't only a margin tool. It's a filter.
Small and regular beats rare and enormous, too. An owner who nudges prices modestly each year is barely noticed. The one who holds flat for four years and then jumps 25 per cent because the pain finally became unbearable creates exactly the sticker-shock and pushback they were trying to avoid. Treat pricing as a dial you adjust, not an emergency lever you yank.
The mistakes that actually cost you customers
It's rarely the increase itself that loses people — it's how it's handled. Three things do the damage. The first is apologising your way through it, which tells the customer the price isn't justified and hands them the opening to negotiate. The second is caving the instant one person pushes back: if you drop the price the moment someone frowns, you've taught every customer that your prices are a starting bid, and the rise was pointless. The third is going quiet — springing a higher invoice on a regular with no heads-up, which doesn't feel like a price rise, it feels like being stung, and that's what actually burns goodwill.
Hold your number, give fair notice, say it plainly once, and then let it stand. Do that and a price rise is a non-event for almost everyone — which is exactly what it should be.
If you're not confident your prices actually cover what it costs you to do the work — the honest, fully-loaded cost, not the number you've always charged — that's the first thing worth nailing down. The Trade Business Health Check pulls your pricing, margins and numbers apart and gives you a written view of where you're leaving money on the table, and how much room you've genuinely got to move. Or start with the free Business Health Scorecard to see where you stand. Either way: the costs already went up. The only open question is whether your prices go with them.