The stair
Pick a common job to start, then replace every rate with a rail invoice and a crew you have timed. Changing rail, chair, or attach fills starting hours and material only when you have not already edited that field.
Hours and material rates
These start from the rail, chair, and attach you picked. They are ballpark crew figures, not a lift catalog or a guarantee.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. Underestimating it is how a $3,995 straight-rail special that looked profitable was not.
Your bid
- Lifts
- Travel
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Rail, chair, attach
- Fold, circuit, extras
- Travel & other
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per lift
- 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 stair, four rails
| Rail | Hours | Price |
|---|
Same stair, five chairs
The upgrade a homeowner is asking for when they say “can we do the power swivel instead?” — same rail, same attach, starting chair kits. Matching the standard special on a heavy-duty job is the losing bid.
| Chair | Hours | Price | vs standard |
|---|
Same stair, who bought the lift
The $795 “just install what I bought on Facebook” special. Zeroing the rail and chair invoices is not a free set — templating their used rail still takes hours, and a rail that is too short is a second trip. Should I install a customer-supplied stair lift?
| Who supplies | Hours | Your bid | At their number |
|---|
Same stair, when they need it
The “mom comes home Friday — same $3,995?” special. A weekday slot is ground freight and an empty house. Discharge week is next-day rail freight plus a slower set while they stay home. Saturday is overtime, a second dispatch, and the same expedite ticket. Should I expedite a stair lift for hospital discharge?
| When | Hours | Your bid | At their number |
|---|
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 do the rates change when I pick a different rail or chair?
Because each rail, chair, and attachment carries its own suggested hours and invoice cost, and the page fills those fields for you when you switch. Anything you have typed yourself is left alone — once you edit a field it stops being overwritten, so your own numbers survive a change of selection. That is what lets the presets be a starting point rather than a cage.
Why is equipment two-thirds of the job?
Because a stair lift is a purchased machine with a half-day of installation. On the defaults — one straight single-flight rail, perch chair — equipment invoices at $2,655.60 against $626.81 of labor for 11.48 hours, out of a $4,855.02 price. Your dealer cost is the number that decides whether this job is profitable; crew speed barely moves it.
Why is a curved rail so much more than a straight one?
Because it is a different product, not a longer version of the same one. A curved rail is measured, custom-bent, and built for one staircase, which adds both invoice cost and lead time, and it cannot be recovered and resold the way a straight rail can. Selecting it changes the rail kit’s cost and hours together, which is the honest way to price it — a percentage uplift on the straight rate understates it.
Does this price a rental or a buy-back?
No. It prices a supply-and-install at your target margin, and many stair lifts are sold on rental or with an agreed removal and buy-back after a short term — a materially different economic model, because you keep an asset with residual value. If you offer that, price the job here first to establish your true cost, then apply your own rental terms to it.