Price Lock Toolkit
Everything that happens to material prices in between lands on your margin — unless you put it somewhere else, in writing, before you sign. The Price Lock Toolkit shows you exactly which materials expose this job, what a price move would actually cost you, which of ten protections fits, and how to get the client to agree to it.
Turn tariff whiplash into a contract clause, not a lost margin.
You commit to a number before you buy the inputs. The gap between those two moments is controlled by the client, the permit office, the lender and the mill — and every day of it sits on your margin, unpriced.
The supplier quote you bid from expired two months before you ordered
A tariff surcharge appeared on an invoice for equipment you didn't import
You padded the number by 5% and lost the job to someone who didn't
You have no idea how many days pass between your bid and your purchase order
Your contingency is a round number somebody picked years ago
You've heard of escalation clauses but have never actually asked for one
A sub's expired quote became your problem the moment you included it
The job was executed perfectly and still made less than it should have
“We'll eat the difference.”
Every dollar figure, percentage and scenario shown on this page and inside the toolkit is illustrative — constructed to demonstrate the method, not measured market data, not a forecast, and not a benchmark for your trade or region. Your numbers will differ; the calculators exist so you enter your own.
If materials are M% of your cost and your margin is G%, a P% increase eats (M × P) ÷ G of your gross profit. The conversion factor is far larger than intuition suggests — and almost nobody has actually run it.
Materials at 45% of cost, a 9% margin, and a 12% material increase. Sixty percent of everything you were going to make on the job — from a twelve percent move on part of it.
In the worked example that runs through the whole toolkit, bid date to purchase order is 149 days. The supplier quote was firm for 30. That 119-day gap is the whole problem, and most contractors have never written the number down.
A capped, thresholded escalation clause costs the client nothing unless prices actually move — which is exactly why it's easier to get signed than a padded number that costs them either way.
All three figures are illustrative worked examples built for this toolkit, not measured outcomes or forecasts.
Not a book about predicting prices — nobody can do that, including the people selling you the material. A system that produces a specific, defensible answer on every fixed-price bid you submit, in about an hour the first time and twenty minutes after that.
Everything a contractor needs to identify material price exposure before bidding, quantify it, protect against it, negotiate it, document it, and monitor it until the material is bought and paid for.
Get Instant Access — $12.99Every chapter, calculator, template and worksheet in the toolkit belongs to one of these six stages.
Find the volatile items
Quantify the margin at risk
Choose the right mechanism
Get the client to agree
Paper the quote and the clause
Watch expiry and movement
Numbered so a busy contractor never has to wonder what to open next.
What each file does, which to open first, and exactly what to do in your first sixty minutes.
13 chapters, 11 charts and diagrams, 5 worked scenarios, 15 clause templates, 62 prompts, 10 worksheets and 4 appendices.
Eleven inputs, ten answers, and a plain-English summary sentence the sheet writes for you.
Ranks every material highest risk to lowest, with a colour-coded 0–100 Material Risk Score.
What +5%, +10%, +15%, +20% and +30% do to your cost, profit, margin and contingency.
Every quote, every expiry date, and one automatic status: SAFE, WATCH, ACTION REQUIRED or CRITICAL.
Your whole portfolio on one screen — eight metrics, four statuses, ten minutes a week.
Editable drafting starting points with negotiation notes, pitfalls and questions for your lawyer.
Risk analysis, clause drafting, negotiation, client and supplier comms, and final bid review.
“Before You Submit a Fixed-Price Bid” — plus the full 17-input Material Risk Assessment.
For when you already signed and the increase has landed. The first three steps are time-sensitive.
Exposure register, quote tracker, validity tracker, tariff tracker, procurement schedule and more.
Ready-to-send emails, notices and letters for suppliers, clients, and your own project file.
Six ten-minute blocks that take one real bid from “I don't know” to a dated exposure figure, a named protection mechanism, a draft clause out for review, and two priced versions of the same job.
Every calculation is built in. You type into the shaded cells; the sheets do the rest.
Illustrative figures shown. The sheet writes this sentence for you, from your own numbers.
Illustrative figures shown. The risk column calculates itself from the expiry date.
Every Formula Written Out and Worked Through
No Accounting or Estimating Software Needed
Works for GCs, Subs, Remodellers and Specialty Trades
Every Clause Marked “Draft for Professional Review”
Every Figure Labelled Illustrative — No Invented Statistics
No Promise That a Clause Guarantees Recovery
Five Worked Scenarios, With and Without Protection
One-Time Purchase, Lifetime Access
Instant Download After Checkout
The method is trade-flexible. The five worked scenarios run through steel, lumber, electrical gear, HVAC equipment and imported finishes.
And a very small fraction of one unprotected material increase on one job.
One-time payment · 15 files · Instant download · No subscription
Get the Price Lock Toolkit — $12.99The individual amounts above are our own estimated standalone values for each component, provided to show how the toolkit is composed. They are not objective market prices, not a comparison with any named competitor's product, and nothing was ever sold separately at those prices. The only price that applies is $47.
Risk analysis, clause drafting, negotiation prep, client and supplier communication, and a final pre-submission bid review — all written for contractors, not for marketers.
Steel, lumber, electrical switchgear, HVAC equipment and imported finishes — each run twice, once with no protection and once with the right mechanism.
Basic, tariff, threshold, index-based, shared-risk, allowance, validity, expiry, extraordinary conditions, duty change, early procurement, substitution, and three formal notices.
How to work out which quote is genuinely cheapest once validity, lead time, freight, terms and surcharge language are accounted for — not just the headline number.
27 ready-to-send emails, notices and letters covering suppliers, clients before contract, clients after contract, and your own internal file notes.
Ten steps for when you've already signed and the increase has landed — including the three things not to do in the first phone call.
Fifteen checks, about ten minutes, printable, designed to be pinned above the desk where bids get finalised.
A plain-English glossary of 26 terms, a guide to where real numbers come from, ten FAQs, and a 30/60/90-day rollout plan.
This is a newly released title, so there are no customer reviews yet — and we would rather show you an honest empty space than invent one. Reviews from early readers will appear here as they arrive.
Your review could be here. Run the sixty-minute setup on a live bid and tell us what it found.
Your review could be here. Run the sixty-minute setup on a live bid and tell us what it found.
Your review could be here. Run the sixty-minute setup on a live bid and tell us what it found.
If the file you receive is genuinely defective or doesn't match this description, request a refund within 7 days of purchase. Because this is instant digital delivery, please review the full details on our refund policy page before buying.
Know exactly which materials expose this project, how much you could lose, what protection to request, and how to put it in the contract — before you sign.
Get the Price Lock Toolkit — $12.99