A piano tuning at $140 where the next piano is 8 miles away pays. The same $140 where the next piano is 38 miles away pays for gas and windshield time. The difference is not the hammer — it is the route, and your books must see it.
Flat-Rate vs. Hourly: Why Flat-Rate Wins for House Calls
Piano work is sold per job — a tuning, a pitch raise and tuning, a regulation, a voicing — each with a flat rate. Hourly billing invites the customer to watch the clock; flat-rate lets you price the outcome.
The flat rate must carry three things:
- Bench or on-site labor: Tuning time (60–90 minutes), plus regulation and repair if quoted.
- Drive time and mileage: Track both. A 30-mile average at $0.72 is $21.60 mileage plus 50 minutes at $30 loaded = $25.00 drive labor.
- Parts: A bass string replacement kit at $18, a damper felt set at $22. Consumables that are not tracked by job become invisible COGS.
Build the rate from the job cost, not from the local competitor. If a tuning costs $55 in loaded time and parts on a dense route and $78 on a sparse route, the flat rate must be set for the route you actually have.
Parts Inventory: The Drawer of Small Values That Adds Up
Piano shops carry hundreds of small parts — strings, pins, felts, action parts — each a few dollars but collectively $2,000–$5,000 in inventory. Track them:
- Purchase:
Dr Inventory — Piano Parts $400/Cr Cash $400 - Use per job:
Dr COGS — Parts $18/Cr Inventory — Parts $18 - Shrinkage: The small parts that walk out in a pocket or break. Count quarterly.
Without parts inventory, a $140 tuning looks like $140 revenue and $30 labor; with it, the $18 string and the $8 overhead are part of the job, and margin is honest.
Keep Your Finances Organized From Day One
A piano shop is a route and a parts drawer. Flat-rate pricing that covers the route and inventory that tracks the drawer turn a per-tune price into a business that can afford the next certification and the next van.
Beancount.io keeps each house call as a transaction with mileage, parts, and overhead, version-controlled and auditable. Get started for free and make the next tuning cover more than the hour you spent at the keyboard.