Your price list is where you keep your set prices, the ones you charge again and again. Once it is in, Mucka uses those prices when it drafts quotes and invoices, so you are not typing the same figures every time. You can also let the AI receptionist quote chosen prices to callers.
It lives in Settings → Money → Price list.
What goes on it
Three kinds of thing:
- Services with a fixed price, like a boiler service at 95 pounds, a gas safety certificate at 85 pounds, or a call-out at 60 pounds. This is the sort of price the receptionist reads out to callers.
- Labour, like an hourly or day rate.
- Materials, priced either as a straight sell price or as your cost price plus a markup.
Add an item
- Go to Settings → Money → Price list and tap Add item.
- Give it a name, like "Boiler service".
- Pick the type: service, labour or material.
- Set the price. For most things you just type the price directly. For materials you can choose Cost price plus markup instead, and Mucka works out the sell price for you.
- Choose the VAT rate (standard 20%, reduced 5%, or zero).
- Save.
You can add a description (it becomes the line wording on a quote or invoice), a category, and an item code if you use one.
How long a job takes
Every item has a Typical length, and it is worth filling in for the work you get booked for most.
Without it, a job taken over the phone holds an hour of your diary, whatever it is. Set Boiler service: 1 hour 30 and from then on a caller booking one is offered slots that are actually long enough, and the job lands in the diary at ninety minutes rather than an hour that was never going to be enough.
Leave it as Not sure for anything you cannot put a number on, materials especially. Those fall back to the default length you set on the Receptionist page.
This is separate from the sharing switch below. Let the AI receptionist share this price decides whether the receptionist may say the price out loud; a length is never read to a caller, so it works whether or not you share the price. If you are importing a spreadsheet, Mucka picks up a length column automatically and understands 90, 90 mins and 1h30.
Charging more for the first hour
Most trades do not charge a flat hourly rate. Tick Charge more for the first hour on any item priced per hour and you can set:
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Call-out fee — charged once, on top of the time. What it costs you to turn up.
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First hour — the price of the first hour. Your ordinary price then becomes the rate for time after the first hour.
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Minimum charge — never bill less than this, however quick the job was.
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Round time up to — the next 15 minutes, half hour or hour. Or charge the exact time.
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Out of hours — a percentage on top when the work falls outside your business hours. "Time and a half" is 50%. It applies to everything, the call-out fee included.
When the quote or invoice is linked to a job, Mucka works this out for you: it checks the job against your business hours and ticks it if the work falls outside them, telling you why ("Sunday 14 June is outside your business hours"). A quote goes off the day you promised; an invoice goes off the day you actually turned out. You can always untick it, and once you touch the switch it stays where you put it. On a quote with no job attached there is nothing to check, so it stays yours to set.
You can use one of these or all five.
What the customer sees
When you pick that item on a quote or invoice, Mucka asks how long the job took and writes the lines out:
| | | | |---|---|---| | First hour (Emergency call-out) | 1 × £90.00 | £90.00 | | Additional time | 2 × £45.00 | £90.00 |
Separate lines on purpose. The customer can see how the price adds up rather than being handed one number to argue with, and your accounting software gets lines it understands.
Mucka already knows how long you were there
If the job was started and finished in Mucka, you do not have to tell it the time at all. Invoice from a job and the length is filled in from the job's own clock, with a line underneath saying where it came from. Change it if it is not right.
If nobody recorded a start and a finish, Mucka falls back to the length the job was booked for and says so, so you know it is a booking rather than a measurement. A quote always uses the booked length: a quote is priced before the work, so there is nothing to measure yet.
Or just ask Mucka
You do not have to open the quote screen at all. Tell Mucka what happened and it prices it the same way:
"Invoice John Franklin for the emergency call-out, we were there a couple of hours."
Mucka reads the charging rules off the item, applies your minimum and your rounding, splits the first hour off, and checks the job's date against your business hours to decide whether the out-of-hours rate applies. If the invoice is linked to a job that was clocked in and out, you can leave the time out altogether and it will use the real one. It shows you the breakdown before anything is sent, same as always. It never works the total out in its head, so it cannot quietly under-charge you on a tiered price.
One thing to watch
Once you set a first-hour price, the ordinary price on that item stops meaning "the price" and starts meaning "the rate after the first hour". Mucka will not let you save a first hour without a rate after it, because otherwise the first hour would bill and every hour beyond it would be free.
Charging more in one area than another
Optional, and most businesses skip it. If you charge more out at the far end of your patch, or in the posh village up the road, set up a pricing area.
It lives at the bottom of Settings → Money → Price list, under Pricing areas.
Give the area a name you would recognise on a quote, like "Marlow and Henley". Then tick the postcodes it covers. Mucka suggests them from where you have actually worked, commonest first, so you are picking from your own jobs rather than trying to remember whether Henley is RG9.
Then set either or both:
- Labour uplift — a percentage on your labour and services. 10% turns a £95 boiler service into £104.50 out there.
- Travel charge — a flat amount added once, as its own line on the document, named after the area.
What it does and does not touch
The uplift goes on labour and services only. It never touches materials, because a markup on a part is hard to defend if the customer prices the same boiler up at the merchant. The travel charge is added once, however many lines the job has.
If the job is also out of hours, the two rates add together rather than multiplying. 50% out of hours and 10% for the area is 60%, not 65%, so you can explain the figure to a customer who asks.
You always see it before it goes out
When Mucka prices a quote or invoice for one of your areas, it says so on the screen: which area, which postcode it worked it out from, and what it did to the price. Every line is still yours to change, and the travel line can be deleted like any other.
Mucka works out the area from the address on the job, in this order: the property on the document, then the property on the linked job, then the customer's own address. That last one is the billing address, so if you are working for a landlord who lives somewhere else, check it has picked the right one.
Turning it off
Remove the area and new quotes and invoices go back to your standard prices straight away. Anything you have already quoted keeps the price it went out at — Mucka does not go back and change documents you have sent.
Charging some customers differently
The other half of the same idea, pointed at who the job is for rather than where it is. Set up a Trade, Landlord or Commercial rate, put customers on it, and their quotes and invoices are priced to match. It lives under Customer rates, just below Pricing areas.
If somebody is on a rate and in an area, the two percentages add together rather than multiplying.
Full walkthrough: Charge some customers different prices.
Prices are entered without VAT
You always type prices ex VAT, the price before VAT. If you are VAT registered, Mucka adds the VAT itself when it prices a quote or invoice, and shows you the inc-VAT figure as you type.
Tell Mucka whether you are VAT registered in Settings → Business → Details, with the We are VAT registered switch. If that is off, no VAT is ever added and prices show exactly as you entered them.
Let the receptionist quote a price
When you add or edit an item, there is a switch: Let the AI receptionist share this price. Turn it on for the prices you are happy for the receptionist to give out over the phone, like your standard boiler service price. Leave it off for anything you would rather quote yourself.
Two things have to be on for the receptionist to quote a price on a call, so nothing is ever said by accident:
- The item has Let the AI receptionist share this price ticked (above). This is off by default on every item.
- The Quote standard prices switch is turned on in AI Receptionist, under Settings, then Inbound. This is off by default too.
It is easy to do the first and miss the second, so if you have shared prices while Quote standard prices is still off, Mucka now says so on the price list and on the receptionist's Business context tab, with a button to turn it on there and then. Until you do, callers who ask a price are told the team will get back to them.
When both are on, and a caller asks what something costs, the receptionist gives your price as a standard charge — including VAT if you are VAT registered — and always makes clear it is not a fixed quote and the team will confirm. It can only ever say prices you have ticked; anything you have not shared, it takes a message for instead. You can see the full list it is allowed to share in the receptionist settings, under Business context.
Import from a spreadsheet
Already got your prices in a spreadsheet? Tap Import on the price list.
- Choose a CSV or Excel file, or paste a Google Sheet link (the sheet needs to be shared as "anyone with the link").
- Mucka matches your columns to its fields and guesses where it can. Check the two it needs, the name and the price.
- Preview how many items will come in, fixing or dropping any rows it flags, then import.
If an item is already on your list (matched by code or name), you choose whether to skip it or update it with the imported price, so re-importing the same file will not create duplicates.
Pull from your accounting software
If your items already live in Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, you do not need a spreadsheet. Connect your accounting software in Settings → Connections → Integrations, then tap From accounting on the price list.
- Pick the software you want to pull from.
- Mucka shows what it found: how many are new, how many already match something on your list, and how many are already linked.
- Import, and your items come straight in.
After this first pull, Mucka is the master copy. When you add or change a price in Mucka, it updates the matching item in your accounting software automatically, so the two stay in step. When Mucka drafts an invoice from your price list, the right item is carried through to Xero or QuickBooks too. You will see a small Synced tag on any item that is linked.
How Mucka uses it
Whenever Mucka drafts a quote or an invoice, it checks your price list first and uses your set prices. If you have told it a different price for a one-off, it uses that instead. If there is no price for something, it asks rather than guessing.
It checks your templates too, both kinds. Plenty of people keep their pricing in saved quote templates or invoice templates rather than on the price list, and all three are equally on file as far as Mucka is concerned. Ask what you charge for a bathroom refit and it looks everywhere before it says it has not got one, so a price you saved as a template still gets used.
The templates Mucka started you off with do not count as your prices. When you signed up we put a few example templates on your account so the screen was not empty, and the figures in them are made up. Mucka will not quote those back at you as though they were yours. The moment you edit one it becomes yours and it starts using it, and anything you have written yourself has counted from the day you wrote it.
If Mucka says it cannot find something you can see on your screen, tell it the name as written. It searches on the words you use rather than an exact match, so "call out charge" finds "Callout Charge", but an item saved under a name nothing like the one you say it out loud by can still slip past. Give it the wording off the screen and it will pick it up.
Building a quote or invoice by hand
You get the same prices when you are typing the lines yourself. Start typing in the description box on a quote or an invoice and any matching items from your price list appear underneath, the way a postcode lookup offers you addresses. Pick one and it fills in the wording and the price for you. Keep typing instead and nothing happens, so a one-off line still works exactly as before.
If you know your item codes, type the code instead. Put in CP12 and the item with that code comes straight up, and picking it fills in the proper wording and price on the line. Dashes and spaces do not matter, so CP-12 and CP12 find the same item. Each suggestion shows its code next to it, so you can see at a glance which one you have got.
The price it fills in is your ex-VAT price. You can change it on the line afterwards if this particular job is different: Mucka will not put it back. It still remembers which price list item the line came from, which is what lets it spot the prices you keep changing.
You can also just tell Mucka in chat: "add a boiler service at 95 pounds to my price list", or "put my call-out charge up to 65".
And if you price something that is not on the list, Mucka asks. Quote or invoice a job at a figure it has never seen — "leak detection, 420 quid" — and once the document is done it will say it has not got that one on your list and offer to keep it for next time. One question covering everything new on that job, not one per line. Say yes and it goes on; say no and it leaves it alone and does not keep asking. Nothing is ever added to your price list without you saying so.
It only asks about prices worth keeping. A discount, a nil-charge line, or labour costed for that job alone gets left where it is.