Job Pricing Calculator

How to price a job so you actually make money

Most trades don’t lose money on the jobs they turn down — they lose it on the jobs they win at the wrong price. A quote that feels fair in your head can quietly skip overhead, undercount labor, or confuse markup with margin, and by the end of the job the profit you pictured is gone. Pricing a job well is just four honest numbers.

1. Direct cost: materials + labor

Start with what the job physically costs you: materials and supplies, plus labor (hours × your loaded hourly rate). Use a rate that reflects what a crew hour truly costs you, not just take-home wage.

2. Add overhead

Your truck, fuel, insurance, phone, software, and admin time don’t bill to a single job — but every job has to help pay for them. Spreading a fair overhead percentage (often 10–30%) across your work is how those fixed costs get covered instead of eating your profit.

3. Price for margin, not markup

Here’s the number most trades get wrong. Markup is a percentage you add on top of cost; margin is the percentage of the final price you keep. They are not the same: a 50% markup is only a 33% margin. To actually keep 50% of every dollar, you have to mark up by 100%. This calculator works in margin — you tell it the profit you want to keep, and it divides by one minus that margin so the final price gets you there.

4. Sanity-check the profit

The breakdown above shows the profit dollars left after cost and overhead. If that number feels thin, adjust the margin, trim materials waste, or tighten your labor estimate — before you send the quote, not after.

Doing this by hand works. Doing it inside CrewRivet is faster — turn the number into a professional quote, send it, and invoice the job without a spreadsheet. Try the concrete calculator and paint calculator, grab the free Job Pricing Kit, or see how pricing works.