Job profit calculator for small business: add the real costs and overhead, then see the price that hits your target margin, and whether your quote does.
Most jobs are priced by feel: materials, a rough number of days, and whatever the last similar job went for. This replaces the feel with arithmetic, and it is blunt about the margin you are actually making rather than the one you assumed.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, and nothing you type is stored.
How to use it
- Enter the real costs. Labour hours, what an hour costs you, materials, subcontractors and anything else you pay for directly on this job.
- Add overhead. Rent, insurance, vehicle, software and admin, expressed as a percentage of direct cost. Twelve to twenty per cent is a common range for a sole trader; your own accounts will tell you yours.
- Set a target margin. The share of the final price that is profit.
- Test the price you had in mind. If you already have a number, enter it and the calculator shows the margin you would actually make, and how far short of target it falls.
Margin and markup are not the same thing
This is the mistake that quietly loses money. A 25% markup on a £1,000 cost gives £1,250, which is a 20% margin. If you think you set a 25% margin and you actually applied 25% markup, every job is five points thinner than you believed.
This calculator divides cost by (one minus margin), which is the correct way to reach a margin. £1,250 of cost at 25% margin prices at £1,666.67, and the profit is £416.67, which is 25% of the price. That difference, applied across a year of jobs, is usually bigger than any savings you will find on materials.
What counts as a direct cost
Anything that only exists because this job exists: materials, the hours of anyone working on it, subcontractors, plant or tool hire, disposal, permits, and travel specific to it. Your van insurance and your phone bill do not belong here, which is why overhead is applied separately rather than guessed into each line.
What the per-hour figure tells you
The calculator shows the price per labour hour and how much of that hour is profit. If the profit per hour is thin, the job is not necessarily bad, but it is a job you are doing for turnover rather than for money. A useful check: compare the profit per hour against what it costs you to run the business for that hour. If they are close, one bad day wipes the job out.
Where this fits with the other tools
The hourly rate calculator works out what an hour must earn across a whole year. This one prices a single job against that reality. Once the number is settled, the quote and estimate builder turns it into a document a customer can accept, and the invoice generator bills for it when the work is done.
Trade-specific context is in the contractor guide and the cleaning business guide, where the ratio of materials to labour is very different and changes how the margin behaves.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Quoting before the costs are known. A price given in the first five minutes is a guess with a deadline attached.
- Forgetting overhead entirely. The job looks profitable until the year-end accounts arrive.
- Discounting without re-running the numbers. A 10% discount on a 25% margin removes 40% of the profit, because margin is a share of the price, not of the cost.
- Pricing the busy months. A margin that only works when you are flat out is not a margin, it is a subsidy from your evenings.
Questions
What margin should I aim for?
It depends on your sector, your risk and how much of the year you are busy. Service businesses with low material costs often run higher margins than installers. What matters is that the number is deliberate and that you check it after the job, not just before it.
Should I include my own wages in labour cost?
Yes. If your own hours are free, every job looks profitable and the business quietly pays you nothing. Put in what an hour of your time must earn for the year to work, which is what the hourly rate calculator produces.
Why is my margin lower than I calculated?
Usually hours overrunning, materials costing more than quoted, or an unplanned return visit. Add those to the job afterwards and re-run the numbers: the gap between quoted and actual is the most useful figure in your business.
Does this include tax?
No. It works on cost and price before sales tax or VAT, which is the right basis for a margin. Tax is added on the invoice and passed on.