A margin and survival calculator. Set your business up once, build a price book once, then price any job and see the number you actually need to hit every month to keep the doors open and pay yourself.
Built for any business that prices jobs, projects, or services.
Fill these in once. They are saved on this device, so you never re-enter them. Overhead is everything you pay whether or not you have a single job this month. Enter monthly amounts.
Rule of thumb: businesses that consistently make money run about a 35% gross margin. Below roughly 30% leaves little cushion for slow months and callbacks.
Your business setup and price book are saved on this device (no login, nothing sent anywhere). Reset everything
These update automatically from your setup above.
The gap between your required margin and the 35% standard is your margin of safety. Covering overhead is not the same as paying yourself.
Set your prices here once. The Bid a Job step below pulls from these lists. Replace the example with your own; it works for any business.
| Role | Rate ($/hr) |
|---|
| Item | Unit | Unit cost |
|---|
Build the cost from labor and materials, then price it to your target margin. Pass-throughs (permits, disposal) are listed separately; the customer pays those, not your margin.
| Task | Role | Hours | Rate | Cost |
|---|
| Item | Qty | Unit cost | Cost |
|---|
This checks your price against the costs you entered. It cannot know if you left a cost out, so build the bid carefully.
Log a finished job's price and true cost to see its real margin, judged against the required margins above.
| Job | Client | Price | Direct cost | Margin % | Verdict |
|---|
Your setup and price book already live on this device. These let you move them to another device or switch to the spreadsheet, with nothing re-typed.
The spreadsheet download is the full working file: your setup, price book, and current bid, with every formula live. On-device memory is per browser; switching devices or clearing the browser loses it, so the file is your backup.
These results are only as honest as what you put in, and most owners undercount their costs or their overhead, which makes everything look rosier than it is. It's a free 30-minute working session, no charge and no pitch, and we'll get your real numbers set up together.
Talk to usThis is a planning tool, not accounting or financial advice. The numbers reflect only what you enter. Use it to make better decisions, then confirm against your books.