Labor & Overhead Costs

Before any price can be right, the costs underneath it have to be. The calculators in this section exist to answer one question precisely: what does an hour of work — and a month of business — actually cost you? Not the wage on the paycheck, and not the invoice from the supply house, but the full number.

Direct labor is the visible part. Labor burden is the part that quietly breaks estimates: payroll taxes, workers' compensation at your class-code rate, benefits, and the paid hours that produce no revenue. Overhead is the third layer — insurance, vehicles, tools, software — that every billable hour has to carry.

Once these numbers are honest, every pricing decision downstream gets easier: your hourly rate stops being a guess, your job prices carry a known overhead slice, and your break-even count stops being optimistic.

9 calculators in this section · every result shows the formula behind it.

Labor Burden Calculator

The true hourly cost of an employee: wage plus payroll taxes, comp, benefits and non-billable time.

Contractor Hourly Rate Calculator

The hourly rate that covers your income goal, your expenses and the hours you can actually bill.

Contractor Overhead Calculator

What the business costs each month, as a share of revenue and as a rate per billable hour.

Hire vs. Subcontract Calculator

Employee or subcontractor? Compare a fully burdened annual cost with a subcontractor's rate.

Effective Hourly Rate Calculator

What a job really pays per hour once every unpaid hour it causes is counted.

Overtime Cost Calculator

What an overtime hour truly costs — burdened, multiplied, and annualized.

Truck Roll Cost Calculator

What one trip really costs: the vehicle's share plus the unpaid drive time it carries.

Equipment Buy vs. Rent Calculator

The days of use per year where buying beats renting — and what an owned day truly costs.

Revenue per Technician Calculator

Revenue per tech and per truck — and the billable-hour rate that makes shops comparable.

The terms, in plain language

Direct labor: The wages for hours actually spent on a job — costed at the burdened rate, not the bare wage.

Labor burden: Everything an employee costs beyond the wage: payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, and non-billable paid time. Commonly 25–40% on top of base wages.

Materials: Job supplies at their real delivered cost, including waste, delivery fees and the small consumables that add up.

Overhead: Costs that exist whether or not any job is running: insurance, rent, vehicles, software, accounting. Recovered per job or per billable hour — on purpose.

Total job cost: Direct costs plus the overhead allowance — the number your margin applies to.

Billable hours: The hours you can actually sell: worked hours minus holidays, travel, quoting, admin and rework. Rate math divides by these, never by the hours you're open.

Utilisation: Billable hours divided by available billable hours. It decides what an employee's hour really costs, because a fixed annual cost spread over fewer sold hours is a higher rate.

Effective hourly rate: A job's gross profit divided by every hour it takes — including quoting, travel and cleanup. The honest counterpart to the rate per billed hour.

Truck roll: One site visit: the vehicle's share of the day plus the drive time it carries at your burdened rate. Usually double the fuel receipt.

Break-even days of use: The annual usage at which owning a tool beats renting it: capital recovery divided by the rental rate minus your per-day ownership cost.

Revenue per technician: Annual revenue divided by field techs — meaningful only with its chain: billable hours per tech times rate per billable hour.

Slow-season gap: What each quiet month costs after the gross profit it generates — the number the reserve must cover before the season arrives.

Guides for this section

Ready to turn these costs into a price? See pricing and profit, or browse all guides.