Business Genie

Job cost calculator for contractors

This job cost calculator adds up what a job costs you — crew hours at the wage you pay, materials and overhead — then adds your profit markup to give the quote price and what you keep.

The job, to scale

Labor
1
$180

Each block is one worker for one hour, at the wage you pay; that is what you pay, not what you charge.

Materials
$150

Parts, supplies and equipment for this job.

Overhead
20%
$66

As a share of labor plus materials: the truck, insurance, office and software. Drag the ring to set it.

Job cost$396
Markup
25%
$99

Added on top of the job’s full cost. Drag the ring to set it.

Quote price $495: job cost $396, profit $99.

Quote price

Quote ÷ 4 job hours$124/hr

Costing a job, answered

How do I calculate the cost of a service job?

Add three things. Labor: hours × hourly wage × number of workers. Materials: the parts, supplies and equipment the job uses. Overhead: the job’s share of truck, insurance, office and software costs, set here as a percentage of labor plus materials. That total is what the job costs you; add your profit markup to it for the quote. With this calculator’s starting values, 4 hours × $45 × 1 worker is $180 of labor, plus $150 of materials is $330; 20% overhead adds $66 for $396 of cost, and a 25% markup adds $99 for a $495 quote.

Should I charge for drive time?

Drive time is paid time either way, so it has to be in the price somewhere. The usual ways are a service-call fee, building travel into your hourly rate, or charging mileage beyond a set radius. If you pay the crew for the drive, include it in the labor hours here.

How do I estimate material costs?

Price materials from your supplier’s current list, allow for waste and the time spent picking them up, and for jobs you repeat, use the average of what the last several actually cost rather than a single quote.

Is the profit percentage a margin or a markup?

A markup. The calculator adds your percentage on top of cost, so a 25% markup on $396 of cost adds $99. As a share of the $495 price, that $99 is 20% — the margin. To check the margin on finished jobs, use the profit margin calculator.

Your quote, as the job is worked

A quote fixes the price before the work starts, but the hours don’t stay fixed. When the crew runs over, every extra hour costs its wage and its share of overhead, and because the price has already been sent, it comes out of your markup. Here is the job you built above, worked.

The crew ran over by

Sample clock-ins

Running 1 h over costs $54. The price was already sent, so it comes out of the $99 markup: $45 left. Every hour the crew runs over costs $54 — the $45 hourly wage plus 20% overhead — and this markup covers 1 h 50 min of it before the job makes nothing.

Sample proposal in the app. Customers see prices, not costs: each line carries its share of overhead (hatched) and markup (blue), so $180 of labor goes out as $270.00.

In Business Genie the quote goes out as an estimate or proposal with a deposit, and the hours come back from the job: GPS time tracking and job costing are built in, on the web and in the iOS and Android app.

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