What goes into a sign price
The short answer: work out what the job costs you first, then decide what to add. Pricing from a competitor's figure or from “we charged about this last time” tends to hide jobs that look profitable and are not. Breaking the cost into items also lets you explain to the customer why one job costs more than another.
- Materials: panels, profiles, acrylic, aluminium or stainless sheet, vinyl, print, paint, screws and anchors
- Lighting: LED modules or strips, power supply, cable, sensors or timers
- Labour: CNC or laser cutting, bending, workshop assembly, electrics, paint, print and vinyl
- Design: drawing, revision rounds, preparing the production file
- Installation: crew hours, a lift or cherry picker, travel, scaffolding where needed
- Overhead: rent, power, machine maintenance, office and sales costs
- Profit, and VAT last
Measuring materials: square metres and letter height
Flat signs (composite panel, banner, vinyl, digital print) are usually measured in square metres. The common mistake is counting only the visible face. Sheets come in standard sizes, and the offcut from a three-metre sign is often useless, so price the square metre on the sheet consumed, or with an honest waste allowance. Frames, profiles and the supporting structure go on separately, by the running metre.
Square metres are a poor measure for channel letters: of two texts covering the same area, the one with more letters needs more return material, more cutting time and more LEDs. Most shops use either a cost per letter (or per centimetre) by letter height, or the perimeter of the letters as running metres of return. The perimeter method is more accurate, because return material and bending labour grow with it. Either way, keep letter depth and face material (acrylic, aluminium, stainless) as separate factors in the unit cost.
Lighting, labour, design and installation
For illuminated work the number of LEDs follows the letter or box size and the module spacing the manufacturer recommends. Size the power supply on total wattage with headroom rather than running it at full load; an outdoor-rated unit costs more, so count it.
Think of labour per department in hours: CNC, bending, electrics, paint, print. Set an hourly cost for each (the person plus a share of the machine). If you do not know how long each department takes, start logging it on a few jobs; the gap between estimate and reality usually shows within a month.
Design is often treated as free, but a few revision rounds are a few hours. Either price it as its own line or state how many revisions the price includes. For installation, list crew hours, travel time, lift or cherry-picker hire and any extra measures for working at height; the same sign on the ground floor and on the fourth floor is not the same price.
Worked example: illuminated channel letters
Every figure in the table is an example value chosen to show the method, not a current market price. Put in your own purchase prices and hourly costs. The job: 8 front-lit channel letters, 40 cm high, mounted on a second-floor facade.
| Item | Calculation (example values) | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Materials | 8 letters × 40 cm = 320 cm of letter height × 25 TRY/cm | 8,000 TRY |
| LEDs and power supply | Modules, power supply, cable | 1,500 TRY |
| Workshop labour | CNC 2 + bending 6 + electrics 3 + paint 2 = 13 h × 400 TRY | 5,200 TRY |
| Design | 2 h × 500 TRY | 1,000 TRY |
| Installation | 2 people × 4 h × 400 TRY + lift 2,500 TRY + travel 800 TRY | 6,500 TRY |
| Direct cost | Sum of the above | 22,200 TRY |
| Overhead | 15% | 3,330 TRY |
| Profit | 20% markup on cost (25,530 TRY × 20%) | 5,106 TRY |
| Price before VAT | Rounded | 30,650 TRY |
| VAT | 20% (example rate) | 6,130 TRY |
| Price including VAT | 30,650 TRY + 6,130 TRY | 36,780 TRY |
Overhead, profit and VAT
Find your overhead share from last year's figures rather than a guess: divide a year's rent, power, maintenance, office and sales costs by the same year's total direct cost. That ratio is the minimum to add to every job.
Do not confuse markup with margin. The example adds 20% on top of cost; measured against the selling price that is a margin of about 16.7%. If your target is a margin, calculate from the selling price.
VAT is added last, on the price before VAT. In Türkiye the general rate has been 20% since July 2023; check the rate for your case with your accountant. Municipalities may also require a permit for a sign and charge an advertising tax; state in the quote who bears these and ask the municipality for the amounts.
Not redoing the sums every time
If you price similar jobs often, a spreadsheet or SignFlow's free sign price calculator gives you a first figure quickly, which you then adjust to the job. In SignFlow, quotes are written line by line: quantity, unit price, discount and VAT rate per line, totals calculated for you, and a validity date on the quote. When the customer accepts, the quote becomes an order with its lines and amounts, so nothing is retyped. Who may see prices is controlled by permissions.
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