Find the Right Price for Laser Engraving Projects

Establishing a pricing method for your laser can be a tricky endeavor. There is so much involved when determining what to price your laser services for. Here are some different ideas on how to better quote your laser-engraving or laser-marking services.

The basics of your operations need to be factored into your pricing regime. Overhead, including power, rent, insurance, equipment repairs, and of course, the cost of your laser engraver need to be built into your equation. There are other things such as packing and repacking and clean up. There will be times where you will spend more time taking the item out of the box and putting it back into its own original container than it will to actually laser engrave the item. Remember to add an additional charge for this.

Setup charges are another item that should be considered when laser engraving or laser marking. Often, it is the setup that will save you if you have misquoted a price. Your time is money, and it should be reflected in your quote.

Once you have added some of the “behind the scenes” costs to your pricing matrix, you now have to come up with a pricing technique. Some laser shops quote strictly on an hourly basis, whereas some shops utilize a quantity-based price schedule.

When it comes to pricing, the hourly basis method is great, but often it can be difficult to get an idea of how many parts you can laser engrave or laser mark in the span of an hour. Thus, you need to do a time test for this pricing technique to work properly. This delays your ability to offer your client a price for the services required.

The quantity pricing method allows you to provide a price to your client immediately, but you can often underprice or overprice the cost using this method.

When it comes to larger projects, we extend an hourly rate instead of a quantity-based price. We offer this for projects that are deemed to take more than four hours to laser.