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Job Price Calculator

Find the price that covers your labor, materials and overhead and still leaves the profit you planned. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

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1 · Labor

Your best estimate of working time at the job.

Time the job costs you that the customer never sees.

Including you.

Wage plus payroll taxes and benefits. For yourself, what you want to pay yourself.

2 · Materials

What you pay the supplier, including delivery.

3 · Overhead

Insurance, vehicle, fuel, phone, software, tools, accounting, marketing.

Hours actually charged to customers, all people combined.

4 · Profit

Share of the final price you keep as profit after every cost.

The least you accept for any visit, however small.

These starting numbers are only examples so the form is not empty. Replace every one with your own.

Price to quote

–

Labor–
Overhead share–
Materials–
Profit–

Effective rate: – per labor hour

Break-even price (0 % profit): –

How the calculator works

Most pricing mistakes come from leaving a cost out, not from getting the arithmetic wrong. The calculator adds up the four things every job has to pay for, and then works out the price that leaves your target profit on top.

  1. Labor. Hours on site plus the hours the customer never sees (driving, the quote visit, loading and cleanup), multiplied by the number of people and by what each hour of work costs you. For employees, that means the wage plus payroll taxes and benefits, not just the hourly wage.
  2. Materials. What you pay the supplier for everything the job uses, including delivery and consumables.
  3. Overhead share. Your monthly fixed costs (insurance, vehicle, fuel, phone, software, tools, accounting, marketing) divided by the hours you actually bill in a month. Each labor hour on this job carries that share.
  4. Profit. The margin you want to keep, as a share of the final price.

The formula

The price is your total cost divided by one minus your margin:

Price = (labor + materials + overhead share) ÷ (1 − margin)

With a 20 % margin, a job that costs you 800 is priced at 1,000, not 960. Adding 20 % on top of cost gives only a 16.7 % margin, a common reason why owners who "add twenty percent" end the year with less than they expected.

If the result is lower than your minimum job charge, the calculator raises it to the minimum, because a small job still costs you the trip, the setup and the admin.

What the extra figures tell you

  • Effective rate per labor hour is the price divided by all the hours the job takes, including the hidden ones. Compare it with what you think your hourly rate is: the difference is often a surprise.
  • Break-even price is what the job costs you with no profit at all. Quoting below it means paying to do the work.

Where the starting numbers come from

The numbers already in the form are only examples, so the calculator is not empty when the page loads. They are not typical prices for any trade or place. Replace every one with your own figures.

Use it with your own data

The calculator is as good as the numbers you put in. The two that owners most often get wrong are the real cost of an hour of work and the billable hours per month: a crew that is paid for 160 hours may only bill 120 once travel, weather and quote visits are counted. For a full method, including how to set a minimum charge, see the pricing guides.