If you’re in the trades, you’ve been watching your supply costs creep up all year. And heading into spring 2026, the increases aren’t slowing down.
Since February, a steady stream of manufacturers have announced price increases across plumbing, HVAC, and mechanical products. Water heaters, valves, pumps, fixtures, and HVAC equipment are all seeing adjustments in the 3-9% range.
Plumbing & Mechanical magazine maintains a running list of manufacturer price increases for 2026 that’s updated as new announcements come in. It’s worth bookmarking if you’re tracking cost trends.
These increases are driven by a combination of raw material costs, manufacturing expenses, and broader supply chain pressures. They’re not temporary. Which means your pricing strategy needs to account for them.
The Margin Erosion You Might Not See
Here’s the trap: you bid a job based on your current cost sheet. By the time you finish the job six weeks later, your material costs have increased. Your labor is the same. Your overhead is the same. But your margin just shrunk by 3-5% without you changing a thing.
Multiply that across 20 or 30 jobs a month, and you’re looking at thousands of dollars in lost profit — not because you did anything wrong, but because your pricing didn’t keep pace with your costs.
Stop Bidding Off Last Quarter’s Numbers
Your service prices should be reviewed and adjusted at least quarterly. In a market with active manufacturer increases, monthly isn’t unreasonable. A targeted adjustment on the services where your costs actually went up is precision. A scattershot 10% increase on everything is a blunt instrument.
Precision requires data. Data comes from your books.
DIY: The Quarterly Pricing Audit
| ✅ A SIMPLE PRICING REVIEW YOU CAN DO EVERY QUARTER 1. Pull a list of your 10-15 most-performed services (the jobs that make up 80%+ of your revenue). 2. For each service, look up your current flat-rate or bid price. 3. For each service, calculate your actual average cost over the last 90 days. Include: materials/parts (check your supply house invoices — have prices changed?), labor (average time to complete × loaded labor rate), truck/travel costs. 4. Calculate your gross margin for each service: (Price – Cost) ÷ Price. 5. Flag any service where your margin has dropped below your target (50%+ for residential service is a common benchmark). 6. Adjust pricing on the flagged services. You don’t need to raise everything — just the ones where costs have actually moved. This takes about an hour and can recover thousands in lost margin over the next quarter. Do it every 90 days. |
Your P&L Should Tell the Story
A single line item that says “materials — $47,000” tells you nothing. A P&L that breaks materials out by service type, by vendor, or by job category tells you everything. It shows you where costs are rising, where they’re stable, and where your margins are healthiest.
That level of detail requires a chart of accounts and bookkeeping process designed for how trades businesses actually operate — not a generic template.
The Bottom Line
Material costs are a fact of life in the trades. You can’t control what manufacturers charge. But you can control how quickly you see the changes, how accurately you price your work, and how clearly you understand your margins.
At BKKPRS, we set up bookkeeping systems for HVAC, plumbing, and home services businesses that give you that control. Job-level cost tracking, monthly P&L review, and the kind of financial visibility that turns cost pressure into informed pricing decisions. If your books aren’t telling you where your margins are, it’s time for an upgrade.
