Should I charge myself shop rate for time spent on my own project or demo car?
Short answer
Yes, track it at your real shop rate even if no money changes hands, because untracked owner time on a demo build is the easiest way to quietly lose money without noticing. If it's not on the books, it's not real to your numbers.
Free labor is still labor, and it's not free
Every hour you or your team spends on a shop demo car or your own project vehicle is an hour not billed to a paying customer. If you don't track that cost, your monthly numbers look better than they actually are, because a bay and a tech's time got consumed with zero revenue attached, and you have no visibility into how much that's actually costing you.
Log the hours at your real shop rate, same as any customer job, even though no invoice goes out. That number tells you the true cost of your marketing or R&D investment, which is what a demo or project car actually is.
Treat it as a real line item in your budget, not a side hobby
A shop demo car built to show at events or post online is a marketing expense. Budget for it the same way you'd budget an ad spend: parts cost plus tracked labor hours at shop rate equals the real cost of that marketing effort, and you can decide whether the exposure and reputation it generates was worth that number.
Personal project cars deserve the same discipline for a different reason: it keeps you honest with yourself about how much of your own bay time is going to your own toys instead of paying jobs, especially during slow stretches when it's tempting to 'just work on my truck since things are quiet.'
Watch for it becoming a habit that eats real capacity
One project car during a slow month is a reasonable use of downtime. A pattern of your best bay consistently tied up with your own project instead of paying customer work is a decision to look hard at, especially if you're simultaneously telling customers you're too booked to take new jobs.
True cost of a shop demo build
| Labor hours logged on demo build | 120 hrs |
|---|---|
| Shop rate | $110/hr |
| Labor cost (opportunity cost of bay time) | $13,200 |
| Parts and machine work cost | $9,500 |
| True cost of the demo cartreat as marketing/R&D spend, not a freebie | $22,700 |
The math: True project cost = hours logged x your real shop rate, plus actual parts and sublet cost, tracked the same as a customer job even though no invoice is issued.
Where owners get this wrong
- Not tracking hours on demo or personal builds at all, so the real cost is invisible.
- Letting a personal project quietly consume bay time during slow weeks without noticing the pattern.
- Treating a shop demo car as free instead of budgeting it as a real marketing expense.
Ask your version of this question
This is one business owner-tested take. Your shop size, trade, and team change the answer. Ask the exact version inside Ask a Shop Owner and get a response grounded in how owners like you actually handled it.
Now run it against your numbers.
This answer is written for shops in general. Inside Ask a Shop Owner it becomes your answer: your revenue, your crew, your market, your history. Ask "Should I charge myself shop rate for time spent on my own project or demo car" and get the version that accounts for what you already told us.
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