Job pricing calculator
Cost the job, price the job, and see the margin you are really getting before the quote goes out.
Line by line
The quote
- Total cost to you £0.00
- Price excluding VAT £0.00
- VAT £0.00
- Customer pays £0.00
Against your target
- Price for your target margin £0.00
- Difference £0.00
- Profit per labour hour £0.00
Nothing leaves your browser. The figures are worked out on your own device and are never sent to us or stored anywhere.
All figures exclude VAT until the VAT line. Gross profit here is the job's contribution before any overheads that are not already inside your labour cost rate.
Costing and pricing are two different jobs
Costing is arithmetic: what will this job take out of my business. Pricing is a decision: what am I going to charge for it. Underpriced work almost always comes from doing both at once - starting with a number that feels about right for the customer and working backwards until it looks defensible.
Do the costing first, honestly, and the pricing decision gets much easier.
What a labour hour really costs
If you pay someone £18 an hour, they do not cost you £18 an hour. Employer National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday pay, their share of the van, their phone, their tools and their training all sit on top. A realistic loaded cost is often 25% to 40% above the wage. Price against the wage and you are giving the difference away on every hour.
For your own hours, use the figure from the day rate calculator - that is the one that already carries your overheads and your non-billable days.
Margin and markup, one more time
Markup is what you add to cost. Margin is what you keep out of the price. They are different numbers and the gap widens as the percentage grows:
| Cost | Markup added | Price | Actual margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| £1,000 | 10% | £1,100 | 9.1% |
| £1,000 | 20% | £1,200 | 16.7% |
| £1,000 | 30% | £1,300 | 23.1% |
| £1,000 | 50% | £1,500 | 33.3% |
| £1,000 | 100% | £2,000 | 50% |
To hit a margin you divide rather than multiply. For a 25% margin on £1,000 of cost, the price is £1,000 ÷ 0.75 = £1,333.33, not £1,250.
The lines people forget
- Travel. Two people, forty miles each way, three days. That is real money and it is invisible unless you put it on the sheet.
- Collection time. The hour at the merchant is an hour of labour cost, whether or not anyone bills it.
- Waste. Skip hire, tip runs, disposal charges.
- Returning. Snagging, the certificate, the second visit for the part that was out of stock.
- The quote itself. Surveying and quoting is unpaid until you win the job, which is why your non-billable percentage matters so much.
Sense-checking the number
Profit per labour hour is the quickest test there is. If a job returns £15 an hour of gross profit and another returns £40, you know which kind of work to go after - regardless of which one has the bigger headline figure. A big job at a thin margin can be worse than a small one done well, and it ties up the diary while it does it.
Finally, check the price against your target margin before you send it, not after the job is finished. The difference line above is there so that the decision to discount is a decision, rather than something you discover in your year-end accounts.
Job pricing questions, answered
How do I price a job properly?
Cost it line by line first - labour hours at what an hour actually costs you, materials at what you pay for them, plant hire, subcontractors and travel. Add up the true cost. Then decide the price by applying a margin to that total, and check what margin the quote you were going to send actually delivers. Pricing and costing are two separate steps, and most underpriced jobs come from doing them as one.
What margin should I charge on a job?
For most UK trades, 15% to 25% net margin on a job is healthy once labour is costed properly, with materials marked up 10% to 25% on top to cover the buying, collecting, handling and warranty. Anything under 10% leaves nothing for the jobs that go wrong, and there will be jobs that go wrong.
Is a 20% markup the same as a 20% margin?
No. Markup is profit as a share of the cost, margin is profit as a share of the price. Add 20% to a 1,000 pound cost and you get 1,200 pounds, on which 200 pounds of profit is a 16.7% margin. To get a true 20% margin you divide by 0.8 and charge 1,250 pounds. This calculator shows both figures so you can see the gap.
Should I mark up materials?
Yes. Sourcing, collecting, storing and standing behind materials is work, and it carries risk - if a part fails you are going back to fix it. A 10% to 25% markup is normal. Charging materials at cost means the customer gets your buying, your van and your warranty for free.
Should I charge for travel?
If it is more than a few miles, yes - either as a line on the quote or built into your rate. Absorbing it is a decision, not an accident: this calculator shows exactly what an unrecharged trip takes off the job. Note that if the job falls under CIS, travel and subsistence you recharge stay inside the CIS deduction.
Does the quote include VAT?
Work the whole quote out excluding VAT, then add it at the end. VAT is never your money and never part of your margin. If the job falls under the domestic reverse charge, you show the VAT but do not collect it - the customer accounts for it themselves.
Price every job like this, without the spreadsheet
Pipeline builds quotes from your own rates and item catalogue, shows the margin as you go, and turns the accepted quote straight into a job and an invoice.