Contractor Job Profit Calculator

Most contractors do not undercharge because they are bad at arithmetic. They undercharge because two of the numbers in a quote are invisible: what an hour of labour really costs, and what the business costs to run while the job is happening. Leave those out and the quote still looks reasonable, the customer still says yes, and the year still ends with no money in it.

This prices a job the way it should be priced. Materials with a waste allowance. Labour at its burdened cost rather than the wage. Travel at what the van costs per mile, not what the fuel costs. Subcontractors with a markup for the risk you carry on their work. Then overhead, recovered either from a real monthly figure spread over the hours you can actually bill, or as a share of the price if that is how you already think — solved properly rather than added on, which is the mistake that makes most spreadsheets under-recover.

What it does that a calculator does not: it tells you what it thinks you have got wrong. If your overhead figure already contains payroll taxes and you are also adding a labour burden, it says so, because that is the same money charged twice and it loses jobs you should have won. If you entered a percentage as margin when you meant markup, it shows both prices and the money between them. If the job leaves the business earning less per hour than you pay the person doing the work, it says that too.

Two printouts, and they are deliberately different. The customer quote shows the price and the scope. The internal costing shows everything else. Handing a customer your margin by accident is a mistake you only make once, so the two are separate buttons that cannot be confused.

It is one HTML file. No account, no subscription, no internet connection needed. It opens on Windows, Mac and Android, and because it is a single file with nothing external it also runs from a web address, which is how it works on an iPhone — Apple will not run JavaScript in a downloaded file, so the download alone is not enough on iOS and the readme inside explains exactly what to do.

What it is not: it does not send quotes, chase customers, or promise you will win the job. It prices the work. Whether the customer says yes is a different question, and a different problem.