Your business
Jobs you are pricing
Work hours are the time on site doing the job. Drive, estimate and supply-run time come from the fields above and are added to every job. Materials are passed through at cost.
Fill in your numbers and jobs, then click Calculate.
Result
By job
| Job | Work hrs | All your hrs | Your price | Floor | Profit over target | Effective hourly | Vs floor |
|---|
Job size ladder at your quoted rate
| Work hours | Price at your rate | Effective hourly | Reaches your pay target |
|---|
How it is calculated
Trip time: 2 × drive minutes + estimate minutes + supply-run minutes, as hours; it is unpaid time on every job. Trip cost: trip hours × your hourly pay + mileage. Minimum trip charge: trip cost ÷ (1 − payment fee). Overhead per hour: monthly overhead ÷ billable work hours, charged on work hours only. Cost of a job: (work hours + trip hours) × your pay + overhead on work hours + materials + mileage. Price floor: cost ÷ (1 − payment fee). Effective hourly: (price − payment fee − materials − mileage − overhead) ÷ (work hours + trip hours). Smallest job: trip cost ÷ (quoted rate × (1 − fee) − your pay − overhead per hour), in work hours.
Not modelled: taxes, licences and permits, insurance claims, callbacks and warranty work, unpaid invoices, seasonal gaps, and local rules on the work you may do. Unverified: tested on hand-calculated examples, not on a real handyman business's books. It computes arithmetic; it does not tell you what customers will pay.
Common questions
What is the smallest job a handyman should take?
The one where the work hours, at your quoted hourly rate, pay for the trip. Every job carries unpaid time (driving both ways, estimating, supply runs) and a mileage cost. Each billable hour contributes your quoted rate after payment fees, minus the pay you want per hour and your overhead per hour. Divide the trip cost by that contribution and you have the minimum job in hours; multiply by your rate for the minimum price.
How do I set a minimum trip charge?
Add up the unpaid time you spend on every call at the hourly pay you want for your own time, add mileage, and divide by one minus your payment fee. The tool shows that number as the minimum trip charge: what you must collect before any work is done to break even on showing up.
What is effective hourly rate and why is it lower than my quoted rate?
It is what you keep per hour of all your time on the job, including driving, estimating and picking up materials, after payment fees, mileage, materials and overhead. A one-hour job at $85 an hour can keep less than half of that per hour once a 25-minute drive each way and a supply run are counted.
How do I figure overhead per hour?
Add your monthly business costs (insurance, phone, software, tools replaced, truck costs not counted as mileage) and divide by the billable work hours you actually do in a typical month, not the hours you wish you did. The tool charges that overhead on work hours only.
Should I charge hourly or a flat price per job?
The tool works for both. Enter each job's work hours, materials and the flat price you would quote, and it shows the lowest price that pays your target and your effective hourly at that price. Where a flat price lands under the floor you can see which job it is.
What does this leave out?
Taxes, licence and permit costs, insurance claims, callbacks and warranty work, unpaid invoices, seasonal slow months, and local rules on what unlicensed work you may take. It is arithmetic on figures you type, not tax, legal or licensing advice.
Is my information uploaded?
No. The calculation runs in your browser from figures you type, nothing is sent to a server, there are no accounts, and it works offline after the page loads.