What an hour has to earn.
Your honest rate from real expenses, billable capacity, and the margin you need, not from what a competitor once charged.
Capacity
After vacation, holidays, and the slow stretch.
Drive time, callbacks, and quoting are not billable.
Annual expenses
Payroll, taxes, benefits: your own pay included.
Fuel, leases, maintenance, auto and liability.
Rent, software, phones, marketing, fees.
The next truck and the next hire, funded on purpose.
Target
The margin the business needs, not a hope.
Your honest hourly rate
$171.13
Break-even, marked up to your target margin. Every quote downstream leans on this number.
- Annual billable hours2,304
- Total annual expenses$276,000
- Break-even rate$119.79 / hr
- Daily break-even$1,150
- Annual revenue target$394,285.71
Your inputs, your arithmetic. No industry averages are baked into this page.
Read carefully
The math is easy. The assumptions are the work.
Billable is smaller than paid
Meetings, callbacks, drive time, training, and the slow season all shrink the hours that can carry cost. Counting every paid hour as billable is the mistake that quietly breaks the rate.
The owner is an expense
If you work the field or the office, your replacement cost belongs in the model. A rate that only works while you pay yourself nothing is not a rate.
Growth is a cost, not a leftover
The next truck, the next hire, and the tool upgrades come out of this year's hours. Fold them in now or fund them from margin you told yourself you had.
A competitor's rate proves nothing
A lower rate down the road does not prove their economics work, and a higher one does not guarantee your margin. Set the rate from your expenses and your target, then check the market.
Start
Set a rate that holds up.
The calculator makes the baseline. The record makes it stick: one price book, every estimate from it, and the week read against the rate you set.
Waitlist open. One email when your invite is ready, nothing else.
Coming from a suite? We’ll extract your records.
Rather talk first? Email the team.