What labor belongs to an event?
More than most owners count. A single party can include all of this:
- Loading the truck at the shop
- Driving out
- Setting up on site, including stakes, sandbags or ballast
- Driving back, sometimes twice if pickup is a separate trip
- Tearing down
- Unloading at the shop
- Cleaning and drying each item
Each of those is paid time. When you add them up, a "four-hour rental" can mean ten or more hours of crew pay.
How do you measure it without a stopwatch?
Use averages. You don't need to time every job. You need a good number for each kind of task.
- Setup and teardown: on-site minutes for each type of item, for the crew size you usually send.
- Cleaning: minutes per item. In the profit models we build, a bounce house takes about 20 minutes, a water slide about 60, and 100 chairs about 60.
- Driving: minutes by distance band, like 0 to 10 miles, 10 to 20 and 20 to 30.
- Loading and unloading: a flat number of minutes per trip.
Write everything in minutes, not parts of an hour. "45 minutes" is easier to check than "0.75 hours."
How do you know your numbers are right?
Check them against payroll. Add up the job cost labor for every event in a month. Compare it to what you actually paid your crew that month.
If your job costs explain close to all of your crew pay, your averages are good. If they only explain 70%, then 30% of your labor is hiding somewhere: shop time, waiting around, extra trips or minutes you guessed too low. Adjust and check again next month.
Should delivery be charged to each rental item?
No. We keep delivery as its own cost, by distance band, with a version for a one-person crew and a two-person crew. A bounce house doesn't cost more to own because the party is 20 miles away. The trip costs more.
When delivery is its own line, you can compare it straight to your delivery fees and minimums. That's where a lot of owners find money.
What does a real example look like?
Say a Saturday party rents a bounce house for $200 and a water slide for $350, 12 miles from the shop, with a $40 delivery fee. Two people on the crew at $18 an hour. Pickup is a separate trip.
| Task | Crew minutes |
|---|---|
| Load and unload at the shop (2 people) | 60 |
| Drive out and back for setup (2 people, 25 minutes each way) | 100 |
| Setup on site (2 people, 50 minutes) | 100 |
| Drive out and back for pickup (2 people) | 100 |
| Teardown on site (2 people, 45 minutes) | 90 |
| Cleaning (1 person: 20 + 60 minutes) | 80 |
| Total | 530 minutes, about 8.8 hours |
That's about $159 in crew pay before payroll taxes. Now split out the driving: 200 crew minutes is about $60 in pay. Add the truck. Say 48 miles at $0.65 a mile for fuel and wear is about $31. The delivery really cost about $91. The customer paid $40.
The rental itself still made money. But delivery lost about $51 on this job, and nobody would have noticed without job costing. Multiply that across a summer of Saturdays.
What do you do with the numbers?
- Fix delivery fees. Set fees by distance band so each trip pays for itself.
- Set minimums. A small order 25 miles away may not be worth the trip without a minimum.
- Check item prices. Items with long setup or cleaning times need higher prices or a setup fee. See how to price your rentals for profit.
- Plan your crew. Some items need two people. Some don't. Know which.
What about shop time and waiting?
Some paid time doesn't belong to any one job. Morning prep, fixing a blower, organizing the warehouse, waiting for a late customer. It's still labor, and it still has to be paid for.
Track it as its own bucket. When you check job costs against payroll, the shop time explains part of the gap. If it keeps growing, that's worth a look too.
Do 1099 crews count?
Yes. Whether your crew is on payroll or paid as contractors, it's labor on the job. Job cost it the same way.
Want this tracked in your books every month? See bookkeeping for party and event rental companies, or read about job costing for tent installs.
