You drove 40 minutes, diagnosed the leak, and quoted the fix — and the customer balks: “Nobody said anything about a trip charge.” The Handyman Trip-Charge & Minimum-Fee Authorization Slip Kit from DealShore was built to end that sentence. It authorizes your trip charge and minimum fee in writing twice — once on the booking call, once at the door — so the fee is agreed before the work, never argued at the invoice.
Small-job handyman work lives and dies on the service fee. The drive, the diagnosis, and your time on site are real costs whether or not the customer proceeds, and a minimum fee is how a one-person or small-crew operation stays in business between bigger jobs. The problem is rarely the fee itself. It is surprise. A fee a customer agreed to twice, in figures they saw and words they heard, is business. The same fee appearing for the first time on an invoice feels, to them, like a trick — and that feeling is what turns into disputes, chargebacks, and one-star reviews.
What the kit is, in plain terms, is a 10-page printable PDF system plus a spreadsheet job log. It does not set your prices and it does not invent your terms. You complete it from your own quoted figures and your own credit rule — for example, whether your trip charge is credited toward the repair if the customer proceeds. The kit’s job is to make sure those figures are recorded, repeated, explained, and signed, in that order, every single job.
It was created because the most common handyman fee dispute is a memory dispute. The office remembers quoting the charge on the phone. The customer remembers no such thing. Without a record, whoever is loudest wins, and it is rarely the handyman. This kit creates the record at both moments where memory is made: the booking call and the doorstep.
Inside, the START HERE page explains where your files live in your account and which file is for what. The Moment This Solves states the method in one line: quoted twice, signed once. The Booking Call Log is where the discipline starts — it records the trip charge, the minimum fee, and your credit rule in the exact words you used on the call, while the call is still fresh. If a figure was quoted, it is written. If a customer later says the number was different, the log is the answer.
The next page, What the Fee Covers, translates the charge into plain words at the door: the fee buys the trip, the diagnosis, and a written number for the fix — plus the minimum-fee floor that makes small jobs viable. Customers resist fees they cannot picture. A page that shows what the fee actually buys turns an argument about a charge into a conversation about value already delivered.
The Door Checklist is walked line by line together at the door: the figures match the call log, the coverage has been explained, the outcome if the customer declines the work is stated out loud — initialed together, before anyone is surprised. Then comes the page the whole kit exists for: the Customer Authorization, signed before the toolbox opens. Work starts on agreement, not on assumption.
After the diagnosis, the Diagnosis & Quote Note records the written number the fee bought, with its validity date, so a quote cannot drift or be misremembered a month later. If a dispute still happens, the Fee-Dispute Record brings the call log, the door slip, and the signature together in one dated read-back you can walk through calmly. The kit closes with a Completion & Payment Sign-off, tying the finished job and its payment to the authorization it started under.
Who is it for? Solo handymen and small crews running service calls and small jobs; dispatchers and office help who take the booking calls; and any tradesperson whose trip charge gets challenged more often than it should. If you have ever eaten a drive across town because a fee was “never mentioned,” this kit was built for you.
How to use it: keep the fillable PDF on your phone or tablet and tap-type at the door, or print the flat PDF — US Letter and A4 are both included, with an ink-friendly black-and-white version for everyday packs. Log each call as it happens, walk the door pages with the customer, sign, then work. Back at base, the included spreadsheet keeps a job log, a fee-dispute log, and a follow-up log, with demo rows you replace with your own jobs.
This kit is a general documentation tool you complete from your own quoted figures and terms. It is not legal advice, consult an attorney about your fee terms and consumer obligations. It states no pricing law, fee rule, or consumer standard as applying.
Related: for software, devices and tools that work with this kit, see Handyman Trip Charge Authorization Slip Kit — Software, Devices and Tools That Work With It.
Make the fee agreed at the door on your next call:
Get it on DealShore: https://dealshore.com/handyman-trip-charge-authorization/
Get it on Etsy: https://dealshore.etsy.com
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