After attending The Unified Group’s 2025 Service Management Forum, Andy Gura of Blauch Brothers shared that he implemented an administrative fee upon his return—an idea inspired by Chris DeMers of CMC Corporate Solutions, who discussed this during the forum. Since making the change, Andy has seen increased efficiency and improved cost recovery in their service operations. Another benefit of incorporating the admin fee has been a significant reduction in the time his office staff spends looking up pricing for each part.  Andy said this has been a great improvement for them. Historically, their truck stock expense was always higher than what they were able to bill for consumables. This was primarily due to two reasons:

1. Some items simply couldn’t be tracked.
2. Technicians would often forget to add consumables to their tickets.

 After speaking with Chris, they implemented their “Administrative and Consumables Fee.” Truck stock generally covers two major categories:

1. Chargeable parts kept on the trucks – Items like pipe fittings, capacitors, contactors, etc. These are things we can charge for but used to take a lot of office time to individually price (typically $1–$5 items).
2. Non-chargeable consumables – Items such as rags, gloves, glue, etc. These are necessary on the job, but there’s no practical way to charge a customer for 2 oz. of glue or a couple of gloves.

 Here’s how the fee works:

• Technicians no longer need to list every small item they use (saves time on paperwork).
• Larger items like pumps, motors, and grinders are still entered, though we encourage those to be purchased via PO whenever possible.
• Every time and material ticket automatically includes the Administrative and Consumables Fee.

 Sometimes the fee fully covers the stock used, and sometimes it doesn’t—but overall, it has consistently offset their truck stock costs.Since implementation, the fee has slightly exceeded their truck stock expense. That’s a win: they’re covering all consumables and saving hours of administrative time spent pricing minor items.