Fill a quiet hour without discounting away your margin.

A blank spot in the diary can make almost any price look attractive. Fifty dollars is better than nothing, right? Sometimes. Sometimes it buys you an hour of work, a trip across town and the privilege of paying for the materials yourself.

Before you post a last-minute offer, work out what taking it will add to your costs and what you’ll have left. You don’t need a complicated spreadsheet. You do need to count your own time, especially if you’re the person doing the work.

Ask two different cost questions

First: what extra costs will I incur if I accept this job? Think supplies, travel, payment fees and any extra staff hours. If a paid employee is already rostered on and would otherwise have nothing to do, their wage may not change because you fill the gap. If you call someone in specially, it certainly does.

Second: what does the work need to contribute to keep my business worthwhile? Rent, insurance, equipment replacement and your own income still matter. A one-off opening and your regular pricing need different judgements. Covering the extra costs of a job can improve an otherwise empty afternoon, but it isn’t a sustainable pricing policy by itself.

The business.gov.au pricing guide is a useful starting point for looking at costs alongside the value of the service. A last-minute deal still needs to make sense for the business providing it.

Do the sums before picking the discount

Take a self-employed gardener with a spare hour between nearby jobs. For this made-up example, assume the gardener isn’t registered for GST and is considering a $75 small-yard tidy. These figures illustrate the calculation; they aren’t suggested rates for gardening work.

That $61 isn’t profit. Suppose the gardener wants to allow $40 an hour for their own time. The job takes an hour on site, plus 15 minutes of travel and admin. At that allowance, the time costs $50, leaving $11 towards overheads and profit.

Now drop the offer to $60. With the same illustrative $14 of direct costs and $50 for time, it falls $4 short before contributing anything to overheads. The diary is fuller, but the numbers have gone backwards.

Use your actual costs, including the payment fee for the method you accept. Keep GST treatment consistent if it applies to you. This example is a way to think about a job, not a complete business profit calculation. It leaves out costs that will differ between businesses, such as subscriptions, annual insurance and equipment finance.

Try a smaller service before a bigger discount

If the price you need is too high for the offer you had in mind, look at the scope. A small front-yard tidy within your existing route might fit. A full garden cleanup with a trailer load of green waste probably won’t.

Spell out the limits in the listing: the area covered, the time allowed, what waste removal includes and what needs a separate quote. A customer should know whether you’re offering an hour of work or promising a finished result. Those are different things, particularly when the “small hedge” turns out to have its own postcode.

The same thinking applies indoors. A salon could offer a shorter treatment that fits the opening. A tutor could offer a focused revision session on a defined topic. Keep the scope small enough to explain and deliver without rushing.

Keep the offer attached to the spare time

If Wednesday at 11 am is quiet but Saturday is full, make the offer for Wednesday at 11 am. A blanket discount gives away margin on work you might have sold at your regular price anyway. An offer tied to a genuine gap gives customers a reason for the lower price and a clear choice about whether the time suits them.

Check that taking the discounted job won’t displace a more useful booking, push staff into overtime or send you on an expensive detour. For mobile businesses, a nearby job can be worth more than a higher-priced one on the other side of town once travel is included.

Be careful with the expectation you set. If the same service is permanently “on special”, customers may reasonably treat that as your price. The ACCC also warns about calling a price a sale when it has effectively become the normal price. Keep the reason, dates and any comparison price honest.

Keep a small record, then make a decision

After each offer, note the amount actually paid, the direct costs and the total time it took. Include messages, travel and cleanup. Also note whether the slot would probably have remained empty and whether the work caused problems for the rest of the day. You won’t know that counterfactual perfectly, but it’s worth asking.

Compare a few similar offers before drawing a big conclusion. One rainy afternoon or a particularly fiddly job can skew the result. If the numbers consistently miss the mark, raise the price, reduce the scope, change the time or stop running that offer.

Don’t count a hoped-for repeat booking as money you’ve already earned. If a customer comes back, great. Record it when it happens. The first appointment should meet the conditions you set for it on its own merits.

IdleHours doesn’t take a commission on service payments, and customers pay you directly. Optional business subscriptions are still a business cost if you choose one. You can prepare offers as drafts before launch, which gives you time to work through the numbers without trying to rescue today’s diary at the same time.

Write your minimum acceptable price beside the draft. Then, when a cancellation comes in, you’ve already made the difficult decision with a clear head. The empty slot can be urgent. Your pricing doesn’t have to be improvised.