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An electrician in Kumasi takes on a rewiring job.
He prices it the way he always does — adds up the visible materials, picks a labour figure that feels fair, and quotes it.
Halfway through the job, copper prices have moved.
He's used more cable than expected because the wall runs were longer than they looked.
He's spent an extra hour dealing with a tripped breaker that wasn't his fault.
By the time the job is done, he's made less than he would have from a smaller job the week before — and he has no idea why, because on paper the quote looked fine.
This is one of the most common ways artisans lose money.
Not from bad work — from pricing that doesn't account for how variable the job actually is.
This guide breaks down what a proper quote for electrical and artisan work should include, and gives you a calculator to build one in minutes instead of guessing.
Why electrical and artisan work is uniquely hard to price
A few things make trades like electrical work, plumbing, carpentry and welding harder to quote accurately than flat-rate services.
Variable material costs. Copper wire, fittings and imported components move in price with currency shifts and supply. A quote built on last month's prices can already be wrong by the time you buy materials.
Travel and site variability. Two jobs that sound identical over the phone — "rewire two rooms" — can take very different amounts of time depending on wall condition, wiring age and site access.
Emergency and callout premiums. A same-day electrical fault is not the same job as a scheduled install. Pricing them the same undercharges the urgent work every time.
Risk and liability. Electrical work carries real safety risk. That risk has a cost, even if it's rarely written into the price explicitly.
Generic pricing advice skips all of this.
That's part of why so many artisans end up back at "just add up the materials and guess the labour."
Breaking down a real quote: rewiring a 3-bedroom house
Here's what a properly built quote looks like for a mid-sized rewiring job.
- Materials: ₵1,450 (cable, sockets, breakers, conduit, consumables — priced at current rates, not last month's)
- Labour: 14 hours at a real hourly rate of ₵70/hr = ₵980
- Site risk buffer (10% of labour): ₵98 — covers the near-certainty that older buildings add unplanned time
- Overhead allocation: ₵120 (transport, tool wear, phone/data)
- Margin (20%): applied to the subtotal of ₵2,648 = ₵530
- Total quote: ₵3,178
An hourly rate only works as a pricing tool if the rate itself reflects your actual cost of doing business, not a round number picked on the spot.
Compare the total above to a flat estimate of "₵2,500, materials included."
That number sounds reasonable in a WhatsApp message.
But it leaves no room for the site risk buffer or a fair margin — meaning the electrician effectively pays himself less than the labour line implies once the job overruns, which it very often does.
Why WhatsApp quotes and paper estimates fall short
Most artisan quoting still happens over a phone call or a WhatsApp voice note.
A number is agreed verbally, work starts, and there's no written record of what was actually promised.
This creates two problems.
First, there's no professionalism signal. A customer comparing you to someone who sends a clean, itemised quote will often trust the itemised one more, even at a similar price.
Second, if there's a dispute about scope or price later, there's nothing to point back to.
A written quote — even a simple one — solves both problems at once.
Building a reusable pricing template for your trade
The fix isn't to price more carefully by hand every single time.
It's to build the pricing logic once — your material markup, your real hourly rate, your standard risk buffer — and reuse it for every job, adjusting only the specifics.
Enter your materials, hours and site conditions, and it applies the same five-part logic used in the example above, then generates a clean, shareable quote your customer can actually read.
Take this further
This breakdown is part of a series covering pricing for specific trades across Ghana and Nigeria.
If you want the general framework this is built on, start with our guide on how to price your services in Ghana and Nigeria.
To build your own reusable calculator for electrical or artisan work, free to start, visit the KwoTit CRM.