Pricing & Profit

Every contractor faces the same question: what do I charge for this job? Answering it well means stacking several numbers on top of each other — what the work costs you directly, what the business costs you whether or not the job exists, and what you need to keep as profit. The calculators in this section each handle one of those layers.

Job pricing starts with direct costs — labor, materials, subcontractors, travel — then adds an overhead allowance so the business itself gets paid, and finishes with your target margin applied to the total. The most common failure in contractor pricing is skipping a layer: a quote that covers materials and wages but never recovers insurance, trucks or software is a busy month moving backwards.

The other classic trap is markup versus margin. They measure the same profit against different bases — cost for markup, price for margin — so the numbers never match: a 25% markup is a 20% margin. Which one you use matters less than knowing which one you're using, and the tools below show both on every result.

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

Contractor Markup Calculator

Enter job costs and a markup to get the selling price, the profit, and the margin it really produces.

Contractor Margin Calculator

Check a quote before it goes out: the margin and the markup the price actually carries.

Job Pricing Calculator

Price a full job from labor, materials, subs, travel and overhead, plus your target margin.

Flat Rate Pricing Calculator

Build a fixed price for a service call from burdened labor, the trip, parts, overhead and your margin.

Break-Even Calculator

How many jobs a month cover your fixed costs — and how many hit your profit goal.

Job Profitability Calculator

Compare what a job was estimated to cost with what it really cost, and what the overrun took from the margin.

Discount Impact Calculator

What a discount costs in profit, and how much extra work it would take to replace it.

Change Order Calculator

Price extra work so the whole job keeps its margin — cost, profit and the new contract price.

Target Gross Margin Calculator

The gross margin your jobs must carry so overhead, your income and the profit goal are all covered.

Materials Markup Calculator

Price materials properly: net cost after discount and freight, your markup, and the margin it produces.

Price Increase Calculator

What raising your prices is worth — and how many jobs you could afford to lose because of it.

Warranty & Rework Cost Calculator

What your callback rate costs per year — and the margin points it drags off every job.

Quote Win Rate Calculator

Your quote-to-win conversion — and what each won job really cost you in estimating time.

Payment Terms & Late Payment Calculator

What slow payment costs: the financing of every day beyond terms, per invoice and per year.

Maintenance Agreement Calculator

Price a recurring service plan from what its visits cost — and see what a member is worth over three years.

Slow Season Reserve Calculator

The cash each slow month costs after what it earns — and the weekly saving that builds the reserve.

Labor-Only Quote Calculator

What to charge when the customer supplies materials — with the risk transfer priced, not absorbed.

Deposit & Progress Billing Calculator

Does your deposit cover the job's front-loaded costs — and what are you exposed to meanwhile?

The terms, in plain language

Job pricing: Building a price from the job's real parts: burdened labor, materials, subs, travel and other direct costs, plus overhead and your target margin.

Markup: Profit measured against cost: Price = Cost × (1 + Markup). Easy to apply, easy to confuse with margin.

Margin: Profit measured against price: Margin = Profit ÷ Price. The share of every quote that survives to cover overhead and net profit.

Flat-rate pricing: One fixed price for a defined job — a service call, a swap, an install — built from the same cost math, priced before you arrive.

Discount: A reduction taken out of the selling price — and therefore out of profit, at a multiple of its size. A 10% discount on a 37.5% margin erases 26.7% of the job's profit.

Job costing: Recording what a finished job actually cost and comparing it with the estimate — the only feedback that tells you whether your pricing inputs are right.

Change order: A signed document pricing extra work after the contract was agreed — priced to the job's margin, not just its cost, and signed before the work starts.

Target gross margin: The margin every job must carry so overhead, the owner's income and the profit goal are all covered by the revenue you actually expect.

Rework: A job done twice and paid for once. Its cost per year is the callback rate applied to the redo cost — and it drags margin points off everything you quote.

Win rate: Jobs won divided by quotes sent. Track value won separately: winning the small ones while losing the big ones is a pricing conversation, not a sales one.

Cost of money: What your money costs per year — an overdraft rate, or what idle cash could earn. It prices the loan you make to every customer who pays late.

Labor-only quote: A price for installation when the customer supplies materials — carrying their wrong-parts and delay risk, which the quote must price and its terms must limit.

Deposit coverage: The test that the deposit reaches the job's front-loaded costs — materials plus mobilization — so the customer's money finances the customer's job.

Guides for this section

Working from the cost side instead? See labor and overhead costs, or browse all guides.