Priced the way Concrete work is billed
A driveway pour and a concrete repair don't get quoted the same way, so why would every trade? SideWRK prices Concrete the way the work is really billed: per square foot — about $8 a square foot. Tap the work, put in the numbers, and the line prices itself — no napkin math, no undercharging a job because you rushed the quote.
What Concrete jobs actually run
These are the starting numbers SideWRK loads for common Concrete work — researched to be realistic, so you can send an estimate that isn't a guess. Adjust any of them to your market in a tap.
Typical starting prices in the app — your area, your materials, and your reputation move them. You set your own; these just keep you from undercharging on the first quote.
Stamped / decorative, priced out
Numbers only mean something on a real job, so here's how SideWRK builds the ticket on a common one:
SideWRK puts the parts on at what you actually paid — so the $2,250 of labor is what you clear, not a marked-up parts total dressed up as profit.
What moves a Concrete price
Two Concrete jobs that look the same on paper can be a hundred dollars apart once you're on site. Here's what actually changes the number — the things to size up before you quote:
- Prep and tear-out — breaking out and hauling the old slab is often more work than the pour that replaces it.
- Thickness and reinforcement — a 4-inch patio and a 6-inch driveway with rebar aren't the same price per foot.
- Finish — a broom finish is your base; stamped, colored, or exposed aggregate is a premium on top of it.
What a Concrete job puts on the record
Every trade documents something different, and Concrete is no exception. SideWRK captures the 811 'call before you dig' utility-locate ticket status and the rest of what your work needs on the record — the details that protect you and make the invoice stand up:
- the 811 'call before you dig' utility-locate ticket status
- a structural or permit flag for footings, foundations, and retaining walls
- silica dust-control and concrete-washout notes
Example note on a job: "Hairline cracking is normal as concrete cures — not a defect."
How to price a Concrete job in SideWRK
- 1
Start the job and add your work
Open a Concrete job and tap a suggestion like "Driveway pour" or "Patio / slab" — the common work is already loaded, so you tap instead of type.
- 2
Price it per square foot
Enter the numbers and the line prices itself, per square foot — about $8 a square foot. Put parts on at your cost so what you clear is real profit, not just the Concrete ticket total.
- 3
Note the details
Add a plain-English note — for example, "Hairline cracking is normal as concrete cures — not a defect." — and a photo of the work.
- 4
Log what the job needs
Capture the Concrete-specific records: the 811 'call before you dig' utility-locate ticket status, and a structural or permit flag for footings, foundations, and retaining walls.
- 5
Send it and get paid
Send the Concrete estimate for approval. Your customer approves from their phone, the invoice goes out, and you get paid — card or Apple Pay, on the spot.
Staying on the right side of the rules
SideWRK documents your Concrete work — it doesn't make you licensed, and it says so plainly. What to know: a concrete contractor license (C-8 in California), a free 811 locate before you dig, a permit for structural work, and OSHA silica plus clean-water washout rules. The app flags the permit and license triggers so they never surprise you mid-job.
Concrete pricing — common questions
How do I price a Concrete job in SideWRK?
You bill per square foot — about $8 a square foot. Add the work — Driveway pour, Patio / slab, Sidewalk — enter the numbers, and each line prices itself. Parts go on at your cost, so you see real profit and not just the total.
What does a typical Concrete job cost?
It depends on the work, but as a realistic starting point a common job like stamped / decorative runs about $4,500 in the app — roughly $2,250 of that is your labor and about $2,250 is parts at your cost. Common Concrete work ranges from about $550 to $4,500. Those are defaults you can change — you always set your own prices.
What does SideWRK document on a Concrete job?
The records Concrete work actually needs: the 811 'call before you dig' utility-locate ticket status; a structural or permit flag for footings, foundations, and retaining walls; silica dust-control and concrete-washout notes. They stay on the job as you work, so the paper trail is built instead of reconstructed later, and the disclosures this trade needs print on the estimate and invoice themselves.
Do I need a license to do Concrete work?
That depends on your state and the job, but here's the shape of it: a concrete contractor license (C-8 in California), a free 811 locate before you dig, a permit for structural work, and OSHA silica plus clean-water washout rules. SideWRK documents the work; it doesn't certify you, and it flags the permit and license triggers so nothing sneaks up on you.
Does SideWRK work for trades other than Concrete?
Yes — it runs all 42 trades, each priced and documented its own way. If you run more than one, the Multi-Trade plan unlocks them all and switches between them in a tap.
Your first jobs
The numbers above answer what to charge. Finding the first slabs to charge for is a different job, and in this trade it runs on what's already poured around the neighborhood:
- A driveway is a billboard nobody takes down. Every neighbor walks past it, and it's still there years later. Shoot the same frame before the demo and again after the broom finish — that pair is the only marketing this trade needs early on, and it costs you the two seconds it takes to stop and hold the phone up.
- Never say a number from the truck. The three things that move a concrete price are listed further up this page, and not one of them is visible from the street. Two 400-square-foot patios can be completely different jobs. Walk it. Can the chute reach, or is it eighty feet of wheelbarrow around the side of the house? Is the grade already there, or is six inches of clay coming out first? Is the old slab reinforced, so the demo is a saw job and not a sledge job? Square footage tells you how much concrete you need. It says nothing about how hard the day is.
- Price the small pour the way the plant does. Ready-mix is sold by the yard against a minimum load, so a stoop that needs a yard and a half still brings a truck out, and the short-load fee doesn't care how little you ordered. Either the price absorbs that, or you batch two small pours onto one delivery, or you bid it bagged and say so on the estimate — customers hear "concrete guy" and picture a truck showing up. Set a Minimum charge for concrete in Shop and any job that lands under it gets flagged, with one tap to add the "Shop minimum" line.
- The job worth turning down looks exactly like a pour. If a drive is failing because water has nowhere to go, concrete over it is a warranty call waiting to happen. Quote the excavation and drainage honestly, or hand it to someone who does that work. Saying "this isn't a concrete problem" in front of a customer buys you more than the ticket you passed on.
- Send the number before you're back in the truck. Footage in, finish picked, a branded estimate they tap Approve on while the site is still fresh in their head. A written number beats one shouted over a fence and half-remembered by dinner.
Repeat business
Nobody needs a second driveway. That's the honest shape of this trade, so the repeat work is the rest of the property and the rest of the street:
- Write down what you saw while you were standing on it. The cracked walk to the porch, the shed pad that's heaved, the patio they keep saying they'll get to. The job site record holds the work type and your own notes — put next spring's job in there while it's in front of you and you'll still have it next spring.
- The street watched you work. Forms coming off a fresh drive is the most attention you'll get all year. Knock the two houses either side before you load out, photos up. The neighbor who watched the truck pour is not a cold contact.
- Sealer is the second visit to the same driveway. Price it at the pour as its own optional line instead of raising it on the phone two years later. Checked or unchecked, they have seen the number — and when they change their mind, you're the one who already quoted it.
- Ask for the review before the forms are on the trailer. Text the link on the spot, and let the app catch the ones you forget — a finished job can email the request on its own, then one reminder a few days later. One and one, and you can switch it off.
- The next job on that property quotes itself. A job you've finished carries a Do this again button: it opens a fresh estimate for the same customer with the same lines at the same prices, ready to edit for the new footage. The patio two years after the driveway is a two-tap quote instead of a rebuild.
How concrete bills
One meter, and the work form asks exactly two numbers to read it: Square feet and Rate ($/sq ft), already loaded at the researched $8 default. Type the footage and the running This work = total moves while you type. That price list up the page is what common jobs total; here's the same $8 doing the arithmetic, so you can find your own pour on it:
Every row is that one multiplication, and three of them land exactly on the starting prices the app loads above — the sidewalk, the patio, the driveway pour. Same number read from the other end. What a per-foot rate can't see is the finish — the third of the drivers listed up the page. Decorative work rides above the base rate, and it earns a line of its own rather than a fatter rate, so the pattern reads as a price the customer chose. The Good-Better-Best Quote for Concrete Driveways is this trade's quote-structure deep-dive: three costed tiers on one 600-square-foot driveway, and where the line sits between a crack that's cosmetic and one worth flagging. Read it before you write your next driveway quote.
Two taps off the suggestion chips, each its own line, both on the same pour day — which is the whole reason to write them as one job instead of two. Now the deposit. Shop offers 10, 25, 33 or 50 percent, and on a $5,000 job that's $500, $1,250, $1,650 or $2,500 asked for the moment they approve. Which one you pick isn't a preference, it's arithmetic: the app splits concrete half labor, half material — that's why the $4,500 stamped job above breaks out $2,250 and $2,250 — so about $2,500 of this ticket goes to the batch plant and the supply house before anybody hands you a check. At 33 percent the deposit is short of that. At 50 it isn't. Know which side of the material bill you're standing on before you order the truck.
Multiplying jobs
One pour is one day. What turns it into three is the work you'd never get to with a trowel in your hand:
- Let the customer buy the upgrade themselves. Mark a chunk of work optional and it reaches the approval page with a checkbox of its own. They tick what they want, the total re-adds itself in front of them, and anything they skip stays on the document struck through — so a month later there's no argument about what was in the number.
- Know the second they open it. The app pings you when the estimate gets opened — the moment to call, while they're still looking at it. If nobody answers, a follow-up email goes at 3 days and again at 7, and then it stops.
- Money chases itself. An unpaid invoice gets an email nudge 3, 7 and 14 days after the work wrapped, each carrying a pay link. They settle it by card or Apple Pay from their own phone, and nothing routes through us on the way to you. Every one of those is a toggle you own.
- The before-and-afters do the selling. Pair the demo shot with the finished slab into the work gallery on your public page. A homeowner choosing between two concrete guys picks the one whose slabs they can actually look at.
- Stop paying for the forgotten trip. Forms lumber, stakes, rebar, sealer, bags — truck stock holds them with a reorder point you set per item, so the app tells you you're down to your last tube before Saturday morning does.
See the optional lines, the follow-ups and a seeded concrete business running in the live concrete demo — free, no signup.
Price it now
A square-foot rate quotes the job. It doesn't tell you how much concrete to order, and that's the call that costs money at seven in the morning. The takeoff below does the volume — slab, footing, column or stairs, with waste on all four and, on a slab or a footing, an optional gravel base and #4 rebar at 18-inch spacing. Hand it that 19 × 25 driveway at four inches and it comes back with 6.45 cubic yards, or 291 eighty-pound bags, which settles the bags-versus-truck argument by itself. The labor field is yours to set; it opens at $6 a square foot for a slab. Same free calculator the concrete page runs (or open the full version):
Free here, and free for good. Inside the app the same takeoff grows three buttons a public page never gets: it traces the drive off the satellite so you're not guessing at 475 versus 600 feet, drops a priced labor line plus a materials line at cost onto the estimate as one chunk of work, and hands you the material list as a tap-to-check pick sheet for the supply house. Opened from a job it also carries whatever rate is sitting in the work form into the takeoff's labor box — and that box is labor only, so if your $8 is the all-in number, take it down before you read the total.
The paper worth keeping
The records list above says what a concrete job captures. This is why each one earns its place on the estimate — and what it saves you from reconstructing a year later, when it's your memory against theirs:
- The locate ticket, answered on the job. Before any digging, coring, trenching or excavation, the law requires a free 811 "Call/Click Before You Dig" ticket — typically two to three business days ahead — so gas, electric, water and communication lines get marked. Hitting an unmarked line is dangerous and can bring fines, repair liability and criminal charges. The job asks one question with four answers: not yet, ticket requested, marked and cleared, or no digging on this one. SideWRK records the answer. It does not place the ticket.
- Silica is the one that catches up slowly. Cutting, grinding, coring or demolishing concrete releases respirable crystalline silica, a serious lung hazard. OSHA's rule (29 CFR 1926.1153) calls for dust controls such as wet-cutting or vacuum dust collection and, where it's needed, respiratory protection. Note the control you actually used while you still remember which saw it was.
- Where the washout went. Concrete washout and saw-cut slurry are caustic, and they may not go into a street, gutter, storm drain or any waterway — that's the federal Clean Water Act plus state stormwater rules. Contain it away from drains and dispose of it lawfully. The job's notes box asks for the square footage, the finish, and where you're staging washout, which is the right moment to answer it: on site, not from memory.
- Permit or no permit, written down either way. Foundations, footings, structural slabs and most retaining walls over about four feet generally need a permit and an inspection; plain flatwork may be exempt, and the rules move depending on where you're standing. Flag it on the site record — no, maybe, or yes — and when there is one, the permit card carries the number, the authority, the status from needed through closed, and the inspections. The fee rides the invoice as a pass-through line at what you paid. SideWRK records the permit info you enter; it does not pull permits or decide whether one is required.
- Your license number, on every document. Concrete carries a contractor-license field — C-8 is California's — and it prints on the estimate and the invoice beside your name. Leave it blank if you're not licensed; the field doesn't argue with you. On a big enough home-improvement ticket the job also reminds you that a written contract is generally required. We don't provide that contract. Use your own.
- April, already done. Numbered invoices, payments, fuel and material receipts all roll into a year-end wrap-up — rows, category totals, CSVs and a printable summary your preparer can actually use.
SideWRK is the notebook, not the license. It documents the work and never determines or guarantees compliance with any licensing, permit, utility-locate, OSHA or environmental requirement. Meeting them stays yours.