MadeForTheTask
Find the person
Somebody doing the job on their own, long enough that how it is priced lives in their head instead of in a book.
What this shop is
Built by people who have actually done the job.
For the freelancer, the do-it-yourselfer, the self helper. Different work, same position. There is nobody behind them. No ops team, no software budget, no assistant.
We find people doing one of those jobs, ask them what they actually need, and if we can build a digital thing that helps, we build it.
We built the first version of the workbook wrong. She read it and told us so, and we threw it out.
Out now
Florist and event floral costing
Format
One spreadsheet, Excel and Google Sheets
Price
$18, one time, no subscription
Built with
A self-employed freelance florist with over forty years in the floral industry
01 How we work
Three steps. We do not skip the third.
Described by the person who does the work, instead of designed by somebody imagining the work. That is the whole difference, and these three steps are what produce it.
Ask what they need
Not what should you charge. What do you actually do, in what order, and what do people get wrong.
Build exactly that
Then take it back to them, to use on a real job, before anyone can buy it.
It will not always be a trade and it will not always be a spreadsheet. Journals, ledgers, purchase orders, whatever the job turns out to need. The rule does not move. The person has actually done the job. If it is digital and people are asking for it, we find out whether we can build it.
02 What the asking looks like
We built the first version wrong, and she told us so.
We reasoned it out instead of asking. It priced a job the way a costing tool prices a factory part. Labor split into consultation, prep, arranging and delivery, each with its own hourly rate. Overhead by the hour. Mileage. A target gross margin. All of it itemized on the page the customer reads.
We asked a self-employed freelance florist with over forty years in the floral industry how she prices events. She read that first version and said, near enough, that almost none of that is how flowers are priced. So it went in the bin and got rebuilt on what she described.
The first version was reasoned, not reported. Asking is what fixed it.
03 Out now, for florists
One job, two sheets. That is the whole argument.
The Florist & Event Floral Costing workbook. Nothing was ever built for this job, so it is not a faster version of something else. Ten tabs, one file, and the part that matters is what happens when the customer asks for a price.
What you see
Event quote
Pick what they are having, read the price. Every line shows what it costs you beside what you are charging. Arrangements, one-offs, rentals, delivery, setup, card processing, the total. Twenty-eight lines on a single quote.
$1,134.16 Cost of the example event, priced by the workbook
What the customer sees
Customer quote
The same job, turned into the page you send. Your wholesale prices, your markups and the per-line cost stay behind on your side of the file.
$5,574.31 Total of the example event, priced by the workbook
Deposits are held, not charged. They sit in their own column and print apart from the quote. On the example event that is $480.00, and it comes back to them with the vases.
The workbook ships with sample numbers so you can see it working. Every sheet tells you to replace every blue value with your own before you price real work.
04 Every number in it is yours
The shape of it came from her. The numbers are all yours.
Set once, on Settings
- What you pay one person, per hour. What it costs you to have one pair of hands on site.
- Your default markup on a flower. Every flower starts there, and you change the ones that are different.
- Fresh stem loss and hard goods loss, as two separate numbers. Blown, broken, bent, unusable, and breakage on vases and foam.
- Your card rate, or zero if you do not want it on the quote. It comes out of the price rather than out of you.
- Your terms and your deposit line, in your own words. Anything a customer needs to have been told.
- Your local price, plus a price per vehicle for thirty zip codes. Local also covers any zip not on the list.
Set per line, everywhere else
- 150 flowers. What you buy it by, how many come in a bunch, and what it costs you. Every row carries its own markup and overrides your default.
- 30 rental items. What you charge for the use of the thing, and what you hold on it, in two columns.
- 20 arrangement builds. Fourteen ingredient rows each, out of your own library.
- Every event. Who you are paying to be there, how long they are there, and what you pay each. Nobody on site? Put zero.
Only take deposits and never charge rent for the item? Put zero in the rental column.
Flower Library
One row of the file, live
Type over the sample. Same arithmetic the row in the file runs. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent anywhere.
Fresh stem loss starts at 10%, the way the file ships. Type over it.
Rose - standard
Cost each
$1.40
Cost after loss
$1.56
Your price
Your markup fills this in
Your number, not ours.
That is one row. The file holds 150 of them, twenty arrangement builds and the whole event.
On labor
There is no labor line. Prep, arranging and overhead are all carried by the markup on the flower. The flower is the only thing marked up, and it absorbs everything.
Everything you do to a flower is paid for by that number. Conditioning, arranging, your time, the cooler. There is no separate labor charge anywhere in the workbook, so setup is a handful of numbers instead of a page of them.
05 What is in the file
Laid out in the order the job happens.
You put your prices in once. Every job after that pulls from the same library.
- Flower libraryWhat you buy, what one stem costs you, and what one stem sells for. One hundred and fifty rows.
- ArrangementsName one, list what goes in it, and its price appears beside the name. Twenty builds.
- BundlesOne line that covers a whole bridal party or a groom party.
- RentalsAnything you lend out. What the use costs, and what you hold on it. Thirty items.
- Event quoteArrangements, one-offs, rentals, delivery, setup, card processing, total. Thirty zip codes for delivery plus a local price.
- Customer quoteThe same job with the cost side left behind. Ready to send.
- Shopping listWhat to buy for the event, and what it costs you, rolled up across every arrangement. Sixty lines.
- Job log and dashboardTwo hundred jobs. What you quoted, what it cost, what you kept.
Room in the file
No macros, so nothing to enable and no security warning when you open it.
- 10tabs
- 150flowers
- 20arrangements
- 30rental items
- 200job log rows
- 60list lines
06 Where to get it
Eighteen dollars, once.
This is a file you own. It does not ask you again next January.
Setting it up is the work. Your own wholesale prices and your own stem counts go in first, and that part takes a sitting. Once it is done, she priced a full event in ten to fifteen minutes.
Want to see the arithmetic before you spend anything? Price a stem up above. That is one row of the flower library, working. The workbook holds a hundred and fifty of them.
$18
One time. No subscription.
- One .xlsx file, ten tabs
- Opens in Excel and in Google Sheets
- No macros to enable
- Ships with a fully priced example event