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Job profit calculator
Job profit is the price before sales tax minus the costs of delivering the work. Include your labor, materials, travel, fees and a share of overhead. A $1,000 job with $700 of costs leaves $300 profit, or a 30% margin. Compare the quoted costs with what you actually spent before using that job to price the next one.
Check a job’s profit
Example numbers
Include what your own time costs, even when you do the job alone. Keep sales tax out of revenue and costs when you collect and remit it separately.
- Revenue
- $1,000.00
- Total costs
- $700.00
- Profit margin
- 30%
Profit = job price − costs. Margin = profit ÷ job price × 100.
What belongs in a job’s costs?
Include costs that the job needs to cover: your labor, helpers or subcontractors, supplies, travel, disposal and a fair share of business overhead. Use the same basis for the quoted price and costs so sales tax is not counted as income.
If a supplier charge already includes delivery, do not add that delivery twice. If your labor figure already includes employment costs, keep those out of the overhead entry. Your own time still has a cost when there is no separate payroll payment.
How is job profit margin calculated?
Profit is the job price minus every cost of doing it. Margin is that profit divided by the price, times 100: $300 left on a $1,000 job is a 30% margin. When the costs come to more than the price, both go negative, and that is worth seeing before you quote the same job again.
A job can look fine on margin and still pay badly for the time. Divide the profit by the hours it took: $300 on a job that ate two days is worse than $200 earned in a morning. Track both numbers for the jobs you do most.
How can this help with the next quote?
Compare estimated costs with the time and supplies the completed job actually used. If travel, setup or cleanup repeatedly consumes the allowance, change the next estimate to cover it. A minimum visit charge can help short jobs pay for their fixed costs.
Check three or four finished jobs of the same kind before you change your prices. One job that ran over is noise; three that ran over the same way is your estimate telling you something.
Example: your numbers in the calculation
On a $1,000 job, suppose labor costs $400, materials $200, and travel, fees and allocated overhead $100. Total cost is $700.
Profit is $1,000 − $700 = $300. Margin is $300 ÷ $1,000 × 100 = 30%. An extra $100 of cost reduces profit to $200 and margin to 20%, even though the customer price stays the same.
Frequently asked questions
Is this my take-home pay?
Not unless your own wage is already in the costs. Income tax, loan payments and costs you left out still come out of what is left.
Should I count my own time as a cost?
Yes. Put your labor in at the wage you would pay someone else to do it. Then profit is what the business earns on top of paying you, and you can tell a job that pays from one that only keeps you busy.
Should I use the invoiced amount or cash collected?
Use the agreed job price to judge the job. Cash collected tells you about your bank balance, not whether the job was priced right; an unpaid invoice is a collections problem, not a pricing one.