Business Overhead Calculator
Add up your real monthly overhead and see what it costs per billable hour and per job.
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Add up what it costs to run your business — before you've done a single job
Overhead is every cost you carry regardless of how much work you do. Most contractors underestimate it, which quietly erodes profit on every job. This calculator adds up your real monthly overhead and converts it into a per-hour and per-job figure you can feed straight into your pricing.
How to use it
- Fill in your actual monthly costs for each category — leave any that don't apply at $0.
- Enter your annual billable hours and jobs completed per year to see overhead per hour and per job.
- Feed the overhead percentage into the job pricing calculator or the hourly rate calculator.
The formula
Worked example
Monthly overhead of $1,450 across vehicle, insurance, tools, software, phone, licensing, accounting, marketing and admin comes to $17,400 a year. Across 1,400 billable hours, that's $12.43 an hour you need to recover before you've made a cent of profit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I include as overhead?
Anything you pay regardless of how much work you do that month: vehicle, insurance, tools, software, rent, phone, licenses, accounting, marketing and general admin.
How do I use the overhead percentage in pricing?
Divide your overhead per job or per hour into the total cost of each job before you apply your profit margin — that's exactly what the job pricing calculator's overhead allocation field does.
What if my jobs vary a lot in size?
Consider allocating overhead per billable hour instead of per job, since it scales more fairly with job size — both figures are calculated here.