The Job Profit Calculator turns the messy mental math of pricing a job into a clear, repeatable process. Enter your real numbers for labor, materials, overhead, and travel, 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. Your job numbers are never sent to a server or saved; only your Quote Settings are remembered, in your own browser.
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)
Below the Profit section of the calculator is a collapsed Quote Settings panel. Click it to open it. You only need to fill this in once: your browser saves these settings locally and fills them in 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 you make in this browser. Your job inputs are not saved, so each job starts fresh. 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 example values for hours, labor rate, material cost, overhead, and drive time. The labor rate is an example loaded cost (the BLS median wage for that trade times a construction benefit burden), not a billing rate. The other fields are example job shapes.
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. |
| Number of Workers | How many people will be on the job. Hours are multiplied per worker. |
| Hourly Labor Rate | Your loaded labor COST per worker, per hour: wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, and benefits. This is what an hour of labor costs you, not what you charge. |
Your total labor cost is hours × workers × rate. Entering your billing rate here would count your profit as a cost and inflate the price. If you're not sure what an hour of labor costs you, our guide to calculating your hourly rate walks through the exact formula.
Step 4: Add Materials
In the Materials section, enter your Material Cost (what you pay for parts and supplies, including any sales tax you paid on them). Overhead and margin are applied to materials at cost.
Enter materials at your cost. Your margin already earns profit on materials. If you also want a materials markup, use the optional Material Markup field: it adds profit on top of your margin, and the calculator shows your effective margin. For more on how markup and margin relate, see our guide to marking up materials.
Step 5: Set Your Overhead
The Overhead % field covers everything that keeps your business running but isn't tied to one job: vehicle, insurance, tools, software, marketing, and admin time. Work it out as your annual overhead divided by your annual direct job costs, and leave out payroll taxes and workers' comp if they're already in your hourly labor rate. Its tooltip reads: "Overhead ÷ direct job costs: labor + drive labor + materials at cost (fuel excluded)." 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 fields in the Overhead & Travel section capture the cost of getting to and from the job:
- Drive Time: Hours spent driving for this job. The calculator costs it as drive hours × number of workers × your hourly labor rate, so a 2-person crew doubles drive labor. Overhead applies to that drive labor, because time in the truck is paid time you can't spend on other work.
- Fuel / Travel Cost: A flat dollar amount for fuel and vehicle wear. It is added after overhead and is not in the overhead base.
Step 7: Set Your Profit Margin
The Profit 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 pre-tax profit. The price is total cost ÷ (1 − margin). Its tooltip reads: "Your margin covers profit on materials too." |
There are no tax fields in the price. Income tax and self-employment tax are owed on your profit, not on your costs, so the calculator leaves them out of the suggested charge. For planning, the results show an Estimated owner tax set-aside of profit × 92.35% × 15.3%, the IRS self-employment tax formula. It is informational, it is not added to the price, and it does not include income tax. 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 job cost plus your target profit.
- Net Profit: The suggested charge minus total cost. This is pre-tax profit; your income tax and self-employment tax come out of it.
- Profit Margin: Your real margin as a percent of the charge.
- Profit per labor hour: Net profit divided by labor hours (estimated hours × workers; drive time is not counted). 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, drive labor, fuel, materials at cost, and overhead, which add up to total cost before profit. Below the total is one reference line that is not part of the price: the Estimated owner tax set-aside.
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: labor, drive labor, fuel, materials at cost, overhead, and profit. For your records only. |
| 📄 Customer PDF | Saves a clean, printable customer quote: labor, materials, drive labor, fuel, optional sales tax, and the quote total. 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: labor, drive labor, fuel, materials at cost, overhead, profit, profit margin, and profit per labor hour. Keep these for yourself.
The customer outputs (Customer PDF, Customer Quote) show only what a customer should see: labor, materials, drive labor, fuel, optional sales tax, and the quote total. Each line carries its share of overhead and profit so the lines add up to the price, and no materials markup is added on top. You can also include 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 examples. Your labor rate, overhead, and margin are specific to your business. Replace them with your real numbers on every job.
- Don't leave overhead at zero. It's the most commonly forgotten cost and the fastest way to quietly lose money.
- Check the Profit per labor hour before you commit. A big suggested charge can still hide thin profit per hour if the job eats more hours than it looks.
- Re-check your rates periodically. Insurance, fuel, and material costs change. Revisit the rates you enter a couple of times a year.
That's the whole tool. Once your Quote Settings are saved and you know your own rates, 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Job Profit Calculator free to use?
Yes. The Job Profit Calculator is completely free, requires no login or account, and runs entirely in your browser. The job numbers you enter are not sent to a server and are not saved. The only things it remembers are your Quote Settings, stored locally in your own browser, so your pricing stays private to you.
Does the calculator save my information?
Only your Quote Settings. Your business name, phone, email, payment terms, quote valid days, sales tax rate, and the include boxes you check are saved locally in your own browser so you don't have to re-enter them each time. Job inputs such as hours, rates, costs, and margin are not saved. Nothing is uploaded to a server. Clearing your browser data removes the saved settings.
What is the difference between the internal quote and the customer quote?
The internal quote shows your full breakdown for your records: labor, drive labor, fuel, materials at cost, overhead, and profit. The customer quote shows only what the customer should see: labor, materials, drive labor, fuel, optional sales tax, and the quote total. Overhead and profit are spread across those lines so they add up to the price, and they never appear as their own lines on the customer version.
Do I have to select a trade to use the calculator?
No, but it helps. Selecting a trade fills in example values for hours, workers, labor rate, material cost, overhead, drive time, and fuel, which you then replace with the numbers for your job. You can also skip the trade dropdown and enter every value manually.
How does the calculator handle taxes?
No income tax or self-employment tax is added to the price. The suggested charge is total cost divided by (1 minus your margin), so the profit it shows is pre-tax. For information only, the results show an Estimated owner tax set-aside of profit × 92.35% × 15.3%, the IRS self-employment tax formula. It is not part of the price and does not include income tax. Sales tax on materials is a separate optional setting that appears as its own line on the customer quote.
Results are estimates for planning purposes. Consult a licensed tax professional for advice specific to your business and jurisdiction.
