Enter your annual overhead costs and billable hours — see exactly how much overhead is embedded in every hour you sell, and what rate you need to charge to cover it plus profit.
Weekly pricing strategy + business math for solo tradespeople — delivered every Friday.
One-time template + weekly business tips. Unsubscribe anytime.
Ask a solo electrician what their overhead per hour is and most can't answer. They know what they charge. They don't know what it costs to be in business — per hour, per job, per month. That gap is where profit disappears.
Vehicle costs are the biggest line item for most mobile trades — payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance, registration. A work truck costs $15,000–25,000 per year all-in for most operators. That's $12–20/hr on 1,200 billable hours.
Business insurance — general liability and workers comp — runs $4,000–10,000/year depending on trade and revenue. Non-negotiable. Every hour you bill is partly paying for it.
Tools and equipment wear out and need replacing. Budget 3–5% of revenue for tools in a normal year, more in years with major equipment purchases.
Unbillable time is the hidden overhead many operators forget. Driving to supply houses, writing estimates, doing admin, waiting on inspections — none of that gets billed. Your overhead per billable hour is higher than you think because of the hours that don't make it onto an invoice.
Your hourly rate must cover: (1) your labor cost (owner wages or employee wages), (2) overhead per hour, and (3) profit. Most pricing mistakes happen because operators skip the overhead calculation and just guess at what "feels competitive." Competitive rates that don't cover overhead are how skilled tradespeople end up broke at the end of a busy year.
Overhead tracker, pricing calculator, estimate templates — everything to run a trade business that covers its costs and builds profit, not just revenue.
Every hour your crew is on the clock, your overhead is running — insurance, rent, truck payments, subscriptions, everything that doesn't go on a specific job. This calculator divides your total annual overhead by your billable hours to give you the overhead cost per billable hour you must recover in your rates. If your hourly rate doesn't cover this number plus labor plus profit, you're losing money on every job.