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If every job takes a different amount of time, the package shouldn't be counted by visits

You'll decide to stop selling session packages for work that doesn't always take the same amount of time, and start selling a balance measured in hours instead.

By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026

You sell a five-session package for at-home maintenance. One customer uses a session to swap out two outlets and adjust a door: fifteen minutes. Another uses a session to tear out an old kitchen and get the new one installed and wired up: three and a half hours. Both used up the same one session.

You gave the first customer free time. With the second, if you keep this up, you'll stop taking that kind of job, or you'll start finding reasons to say no so you don't lose money on every visit. A package counted by visits works when every job takes the same amount of work. In home repair, jobs almost never take the same amount of work, and counting visits instead of time is exactly why the package stops adding up once you've sold a handful of them.

A session only measures fairly when every job takes the same amount of work

A session-based package works beautifully for a one-hour massage or a forty-five-minute pilates class. There, a session and time are the same thing, so counting sessions or counting hours gives you the same result, and a session is easier to advertise: ten sessions needs no further explanation.

The problem shows up the moment the job's size changes from one day to the next: a plumbing call, an appliance repair, an electrical inspection. At that point, a session no longer measures the job, it just measures that you showed up once. And if that's all it measures, the price you set per session has to cover the longest case you might run into, because if you price it around the short job, you lose money every time the long one comes along.

With a spread like that, any flat per-visit price you set will be wrong most of the time. Price it for one hour, and you lose money on half your calls, the ones that run longer. Price it for two hours, and the customer who just needs an outlet swapped goes elsewhere because it's too expensive. No single per-visit price works for both cases, because the visit isn't the unit that actually varies. Time is.

What to measure instead: hours or units of work

The alternative is to measure what actually changes from one job to the next: time, or finished work. An hours package sells a bank of time, ten hours or twenty hours, and each service call draws down the balance by however long it took. In appliance repair, the time is already tracked: Royal Decree 58/1988 requires the invoice to itemize the labor time used. A job-based package sells a set number of predefined tasks, an installation, an inspection, an assembly, and each one is worth its price no matter how long it takes.

Which of the two you use depends on whether your trade looks more like a plumber who bills by hours worked or a locksmith who charges a flat rate to change a lock; that's what the next lesson in this course covers. What you're deciding today is simpler: stop selling individual sessions and start selling a balance that gets used up based on what each job actually costs, not how many times you showed up.

How to explain it to the customer

Explain the switch in a short summary, not a long paragraph of fine print. Besides the price, the customer needs to know three things: how much they're buying, what it can be used for, and how long it's good for. That's also what the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users requires: before signing anyone up, you have to disclose the service's main features, the total price or how it's calculated, and how long the contract lasts. Everything else can skip the ad, but have it in writing and hand it over before the customer pays, not just when they ask. One thing to keep in mind: if you sell to individual consumers, deduct time exactly as worked. That same law treats rounding consumed time up as an unfair clause. What it does allow, when starting the service unavoidably comes with a cost, is billing that cost separately, as long as it isn't already baked into the price and it matches the service you actually provided.

You're already selling hours instead of visits, but before you write your first invoice, you still need to decide what to do with the five-minute call. You can't deduct more time than you actually worked from an individual consumer, so whatever it costs you to get there either goes into the price or gets billed separately.