The Job Profit Calculator turns the messy mental math of pricing a job into a clear, repeatable process. Enter your real numbers — labor, materials, overhead, travel, and taxes — and it tells you exactly what to charge the customer and what you'll actually keep after every cost.
This guide walks through every field and button, step by step, so you can price your next job with confidence in about two minutes. It's free, requires no login, and runs entirely in your browser — none of your numbers are sent anywhere or stored on a server.
The short version: Pick your trade, adjust the pre-filled numbers to match your job, and read the Suggested Charge at the top of the results panel. Everything below is the detail behind that two-minute workflow.
Before You Start: Quote Settings (One-Time Setup)
At the very top of the calculator is a Quote Settings section. You only need to fill this in once — your browser remembers it for next time. These settings control what appears on the quote you send to customers.
- Business Info — Your business name, phone, and email. Check "Include business info in customer quote" to put your contact details at the top of every quote you send.
- Payment Terms — A free-text field (for example, "50% deposit due at start"). Check the box beside it to include it on the customer quote.
- Quote Valid (days) — How long your quote stands. With the box checked, the customer quote shows a "valid until" date calculated from today.
- Sales Tax on Materials (%) — If your state requires you to collect sales tax on materials, enter the rate and check "Charge sales tax." It appears as its own line on the customer quote and is added to the total.
Set these once and they'll be ready on every quote going forward. Now to the job itself.
Step 1: Select Your Trade
Choose your trade from the dropdown — plumber, electrician, HVAC, roofer, painter, landscaper, general contractor, carpenter, flooring, concrete, drywall, or handyman. The moment you pick one, the calculator auto-fills realistic default values for hours, labor rate, material cost, markup, overhead, and drive time based on typical numbers for that trade.
These defaults are a starting point, not a final answer. Every field stays fully editable — adjust each one to match the specific job in front of you. If you'd rather start from scratch, you can skip the dropdown and type every value manually.
Step 2: Name the Job
Under Job Information, enter a description or label — "Bathroom remodel," "Panel upgrade," "Roof replacement." This label appears on your quotes and saved PDFs so you can tell jobs apart later. It has no effect on the math; it's purely for identification.
Step 3: Enter Your Labor
The Labor section has three fields:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Estimated Hours | Total hours you expect the job to take. |
| Workers | How many people will be on the job. Hours are multiplied per worker. |
| Hourly Rate | Your loaded labor rate per worker, per hour. |
Your total labor cost is hours × workers × rate. If you're not sure what your hourly rate should be, our guide to calculating your hourly rate walks through the exact formula.
Step 4: Add Materials and Markup
In the Materials section, enter your Material Cost (what you pay for parts and supplies) and your Material Markup % (the percentage you add on top). A 15–30% markup is standard across most trades — it compensates you for sourcing, purchasing, transporting, and managing materials. For the full breakdown, see our guide to marking up materials.
Step 5: Set Your Overhead
The Overhead & Burden field is a percentage applied to your direct costs (labor plus materials). It covers everything that keeps your business running but isn't tied to one job — vehicle, insurance, tools, software, marketing, and admin time. Most trade contractors land between 15% and 25%. If you're not sure of your number, our overhead percentage guide shows you how to calculate it from your own expenses.
Step 6: Add Travel
The Travel section captures the cost of getting to and from the job:
- Drive Time — Hours spent driving for this job. It's billed at your labor rate, because time in the truck is time you can't spend earning elsewhere.
- Fuel / Travel Cost — A flat dollar amount for fuel and vehicle wear.
Step 7: Set Profit Margin and Taxes
The Profit & Taxes section is where good pricing separates from guesswork:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Desired Profit Margin | The percent of your final charge you want to keep as profit. Margin is not the same as markup — the built-in tooltip explains the difference. |
| SE Tax Rate | Self-employment tax, 15.3% by default — the full Social Security and Medicare contribution self-employed contractors owe. |
| State Income Tax | Your effective state income tax rate. Enter 0 for no-income-tax states like TX, FL, and WA. |
The calculator folds both taxes into the suggested charge so the price you quote already covers your tax burden. To understand exactly what these taxes mean for your take-home, read our guide to self-employment tax for contractors.
Step 8: Read Your Results
As you type, the Live Results panel updates instantly. Here's what each number means:
- Suggested Charge to Customer — The headline number. This is the all-in price that covers every cost plus your target profit and taxes.
- Net Profit — What you actually keep after all costs and taxes on this job.
- Profit Margin — Your real margin as a percent of the charge.
- Effective $/hr — What you're truly earning per hour worked, after everything. This is the number that tells you whether a job is actually worth taking.
Click View Full Cost Breakdown to expand a line-by-line accounting of labor, materials, overhead, travel, SE tax, and state tax — every dollar that goes into the suggested charge.
Watch the money badge. The colored badge at the top of the results panel — green, amber, or red — gives you an instant read on whether the job is healthily profitable, thin, or losing money at the numbers you've entered.
Sending the Quote: The Five Buttons
At the bottom of the calculator are five action buttons. Hover over any of them for a tooltip reminder of what it does.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| ↺ Reset | Resets all fields to the defaults for your selected trade. |
| 🖨 Internal PDF | Saves a full internal summary as a PDF — including labor rate, markup, overhead, taxes, and profit. For your records only. |
| 📄 Customer PDF | Saves a clean, printable customer quote — labor, materials, optional sales tax, travel, and total due. No internal numbers. |
| 📤 Customer Quote | Copies the customer-facing quote to your clipboard to paste into a text, email, or invoice. |
| 📋 Copy Internal Quote | Copies your full internal breakdown to the clipboard for your own records. |
Internal vs. Customer: What the Customer Sees
This is the most important distinction in the tool. The internal outputs (Internal PDF, Copy Internal Quote) show everything — your markup percentage, overhead, taxes, profit margin, and effective hourly rate. Keep these for yourself.
The customer outputs (Customer PDF, Customer Quote) show only what a customer should see: labor, materials at the marked-up price, optional sales tax, travel, and the total due — plus your business info, payment terms, and valid-until date if you enabled them in Quote Settings. No markup, overhead, or profit figures ever appear on the customer version. You get a professional quote to send, and your pricing strategy stays private.
Tips for Accurate Pricing
- Update the defaults to your real numbers. The trade defaults are averages. Your labor rate, overhead, and markup are specific to your business — adjust them once and they'll be close every time.
- Don't leave overhead at zero. It's the most commonly forgotten cost and the fastest way to quietly lose money.
- Check the Effective $/hr before you commit. A big suggested charge can still hide a low real hourly rate if the job eats more hours than it looks.
- Re-check your rates periodically. Insurance, fuel, and material costs change. Revisit your default inputs a couple of times a year.
That's the whole tool. Once your settings and defaults are dialed in, pricing a new job is a 60-second task — and every quote you send is built on real costs instead of a guess.
Open the Job Profit Calculator and run your next job through it now.
Results are estimates for planning purposes. Consult a licensed tax professional for advice specific to your business and jurisdiction.
