Job Costing Calculator: Price a Job From the Ground Up
Every cost line, then contingency, then overhead and profit, ending in a price you can defend line by line. And unlike every other job costing calculator, this one hands you the finished estimate.
When the figures look right, the estimate downloads as a real PDF with your business details on it, built inside your own browser. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
Worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with and the answer it gives. Change anything above and every number below moves with it.
- Materials6800 $
- Labor hours120
- Burdened labor cost per hour46 $
- Subcontractors3200 $
- Equipment and rentals900 $
- Permits, dump fees, travel650 $
- Contingency5 %
- Overhead15 %
- Profit10 %
Quote this job at$23,898.00
| Materials | $6,800.00 |
|---|---|
| Labor, 120 hrs at $46.00 | $5,520.00 |
| Subcontractors | $3,200.00 |
| Equipment | $900.00 |
| Permits, fees, travel | $650.00 |
| Direct cost | $17,070.00 |
| Contingency at 5% | $853.50 |
| Total cost | $17,923.50 |
| Overhead and profit | $5,974.50 |
| Price | $23,898.00 |
| Gross margin | 25% |
| Cost per labor hour, all in | $199.15 |
The estimate line items this produces
| Materials | 1 |
|---|---|
| Labor, 120 hours | 120 |
| Subcontractors | 1 |
| Equipment and rentals | 1 |
| Permits, dump fees and travel | 1 |
What this calculator assumes
- Use the burdened labor rate, not the wage. If you do not know it, run the labor burden calculator first, because the gap between the two is usually 35 to 60 percent.
- Contingency is not profit. It is for the surprise behind the wall, and on a remodel it should not be under 5 percent.
- Overhead and profit are taken as margins out of the price, which is the conservative reading.
Use the burdened labor rate
The labor line here wants the burdened cost per hour, not the wage. If you put the wage in, every job will look 35 to 60 percent more profitable than it is, and you will find out at the end of the year.
If you do not know your burdened rate, run the labor burden calculator first. It takes a minute and it is the single highest value number in your whole estimating process.
Contingency is not profit and it is not padding
Contingency covers the thing you cannot see: the rot behind the siding, the wiring that is not to code, the slab that is two inches out of level. On new construction 3 percent is defensible. On a remodel, 5 is a floor and 10 is not paranoid.
Keep it as its own line, in your own copy of the numbers. The moment contingency gets quietly folded into profit, you stop being able to tell a job that went well from a job where nothing went wrong.
Then look back at it
Job costing only earns its keep if you compare the estimate to the actual afterwards. Materials bought, hours worked, subs paid, against what you predicted.
Do that for ten jobs and you stop guessing. You will find out that you are consistently 15 percent light on labor for a particular kind of work, or that a certain customer type always costs an extra site visit. That is the information that turns a busy contractor into a profitable one, and it is free, it is just work.
Questions people ask
What is job costing?
Tracking every cost against a single job, materials, labor, subs, equipment and overhead, so you can tell whether that specific job made money.
Free Contractor Estimate Template, free, no signup, PDF Word and Excel.