A travel charge pays for getting to a job that sits outside the area your normal prices assume. Within that area, travel is built into your call-out fee or your rates. Beyond it, the extra kilometres and the extra hours behind the wheel are real costs, and a travel charge passes them on openly instead of hiding them in a higher hourly rate for everyone. It can be set per kilometre, as travel time at an hourly rate, as a flat fee for each zone or ring of distance from your base, or as a combination. On jobs far enough away to need a night on the road, accommodation and meals are usually added as their own line.
The charge should be stated before the visit, with the method, so the customer can work it out for themselves. A travel line that appears for the first time on the invoice is the one customers remember.
In practice
An air conditioning technician based in a regional town includes travel within 25 kilometres of the depot in the call-out fee, and charges $1.40 a kilometre for the return trip beyond that. A job 85 kilometres out has 60 kilometres outside the free area each way, so 120 chargeable kilometres, $168. A job 30 kilometres away carries $14. The customer in the next town can check the figure on a map.
Zones are simpler to quote and easier for customers to understand: $60 for 25 to 50 kilometres, $140 for 50 to 100, by arrangement beyond that. They are less exact for you, so set the boundaries where your jobs actually cluster. Whichever method you use, the biggest saving is not in the charge at all. It is in grouping jobs in the same direction on the same day, so that one long drive pays for itself several times. The guide to travel charges for regional work covers the arithmetic.
In Quote Desk
Add a travel item to your price list with kilometre or hour as its unit, or one item per zone priced each. Quantities are whole numbers, so round the distance to the nearest kilometre. The price list help article explains units.