Your overhead on direct cost and target net margin are the same on every job you bid. Save them once and every trade bid calculator here opens with your numbers instead of a stranger’s ballpark.
This tool asks for a loaded labour rate — wage and burden together — so your saved wage and burden are left alone here.
Kept in this browser only, on this site’s own storage. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it. Forgetting them leaves the numbers already on this bid alone.
Keep this bid so it is still here when the customer calls back. Every number on this form is saved together, under a name you choose, along with the figure it gave you, and restoring one puts the whole job back exactly as you priced it. Mark each one won or lost when you hear — the ones you have not heard back on stay listed as waiting, with how long they have been out. Once a few have come back, this panel says how long yours actually take, and how many are still out past that. Once enough of them have been decided, it also says whether the bids you save here have been landing differently lately than they used to. Once a few here are decided, this panel says what the ones you won averaged against the ones you lost, so you can see where your price tips. On a lost bid you can also note what the job went for, if you heard — then it says how far off you actually were, which is the part guessing gets wrong in both directions. On a won one, note what the job came to once it was done and this panel says what those jobs actually kept, so you can see whether the ones you are winning are worth winning — and it tells you how many of your won jobs are still missing that figure, rather than going quiet about it. Restoring a bid also pins the figure it was saved at above this panel, so when the customer asks what it costs without the tear-off, the new number is shown against the one they already have — and by how much, in money and in percent.
Kept in this browser only, on this site’s own storage. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing your browser data clears it — download a backup to keep a copy or open your bids on another device. Bids are kept per tool, so these are the ones you saved here.
FOR INDEPENDENT APPLIANCE REPAIR TECHNICIANS
Price the service call, not just the part.
Build a repair quote from diagnostic time, repair time, travel, parts markup, callback reserve, and overhead. Then see whether finishing that repair still beats recommending replace — what the customer pays per remaining year, and what you keep if they decline.
Use your own loaded labor cost and observed callback rate. The defaults are examples, not market guidance.
Quote draft
target price at your margin
Walk-away floor
Total cost modeled
Labor hours
Effective hourly rate
Parts after markup
Callback reserve
Price sensitivity
Customer price
Profit
Margin
This is a transparent quote draft using your assumptions. It does not include taxes, permits, financing, or manufacturer warranty terms unless you add them to your inputs.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Repair vs replace this machine
A $635 target on a machine with three years left can still lose to a $799 replacement that lasts ten. Distinct from a boiler winters-of-patches bid: this is one service-call quote against remaining years, plus the diagnostic you already earned if they walk.
Why isn't the walk-away floor the same as the target price?
The walk-away floor is your modeled cost — labor, marked-up parts, trip cost, callback reserve, and overhead — with zero profit in it. The target price divides that cost by 1 − margin, so a 30% target margin on a $444.68 cost quotes $635.25, not $444.68 plus 30%. Anything you collect below the floor loses money on this job the moment you factor in the reserve and overhead you already built into it.
How does the callback / warranty reserve actually get priced in?
It's a percentage of labor, marked-up parts, and trip cost combined — not of the final price — and it lands before overhead and margin are applied, so it compounds with both rather than sitting outside them. A 5% reserve on a $385 direct job adds $19.25 to the base the overhead percentage and the margin formula then both work from, which is why a callback rate that looks small on paper still moves the quoted price by more than 5%.
If the customer declines and I recommend replace, what do I actually keep?
Whatever diagnostic or trip fee you collect for the visit, plus anything you keep from selling or installing the replacement unit — separate from the profit you'd have made finishing the repair. The calculator compares that total against your repair profit directly, so you can see in dollars whether walking with the diagnostic and a referral beats finishing the job, not just whether the customer prefers one option.
Why can the repair be the better deal for you and the worse deal for the customer at the same time?
Because the two sides are measured differently: your side compares total profit kept, the customer's side compares price per remaining year of service. A repair with a high margin can still cost a customer more per year than a replacement that lasts three times longer, even though it's the more profitable job for you to finish — which is exactly the tension the repair-vs-replace verdict is built to surface instead of hide.
Why does parts markup apply before overhead and margin, not after?
Parts markup is added once, to the parts cost itself, before that marked-up figure joins labor and trip cost as part of direct cost. Overhead and the callback reserve then apply to that combined direct cost, and target margin applies last, to the full cost including overhead — so a change to parts markup ripples through the reserve, the overhead dollar amount, and the final target price, not just the parts line.