The openings
Pick a common job to start, then replace every rate with a unit invoice and a crew you have timed. Changing type, scope, or roof fills starting hours and material only when you have not already edited that field.
Hours and material rates
These start from the type, scope, and roof you picked. They are ballpark crew figures, not a unit catalog or a guarantee.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. Underestimating it is how an $800 / unit tube special that looked profitable was not.
Your bid
- Units
- Shafts
- Travel
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Units and flashing
- Cut-in, roof, extras
- Travel & other
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per unit
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
A bid link carries your own rates — wage, burden, overhead, and target margin — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The numbers ride after the #, which is never sent to a server, so copying a link uploads nothing. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Same openings, three unit types
| Type | Hours | Price |
|---|
Where the hours go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting hours and material rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Common questions
Why is the shaft $0 on the default job?
Because the defaults replace an existing tubular unit, and a replacement re-uses the opening and the light shaft that are already there. Shaft hours and material only appear when you enter shafts — which a new installation through a finished ceiling always needs, along with framing, drywall, and paint. That single difference is most of the gap between a $1,379.84 replacement and a new cut-in.
Why is flashing billed separately from the skylight?
Because it is matched to the roof, not to the unit: the default adds $85 of flashing against a $380 unit. Flashing kits differ by roof covering, and fitting one to tile or metal takes materially longer than to asphalt. Nearly every skylight leak traced back to installation is a flashing failure rather than a failed unit, which is why it is a visible line here rather than folded into the unit price.
Why is travel $22.40 on top of the travel-and-equipment charge?
Because they cover different things. The per-mile line is the vehicle running cost for the eight default miles; the separate travel-and-equipment charge is the fixed cost of turning out at all. The trip also appears a third time, as 1.68 hours of paid crew time. Short-duration roof work is dominated by the cost of showing up — the whole job is only 7.28 hours.
Does an existing roof warranty survive this?
Possibly not, and the tool cannot tell you. Cutting a new penetration in a roof still under a manufacturer or workmanship warranty frequently voids it unless the original roofer does the work. Check before you quote a cut-in on a recent roof: it is a common reason a homeowner cancels after accepting a price, and it is cheaper to find out first.