Your crew hourly wage, payroll burden, 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.
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 CONTRACTORS AND TRADE BUSINESSES
Price the change before it changes your margin.
A customer adds outlets, a wall, a repair, or a delivery. Enter the added labor and direct costs to see the walk-away floor, a target-margin price, and a summary you can send for written approval.
Copy this after checking quantities, schedule, and contract terms.
Your price floor
$0.00
Target price for the margin you entered.
Walk-away cost floor
$0.00
Loaded labor
$0.00
Materials + subcontractor
$0.00
Overhead
$0.00
Extended general conditions
$0.00
Most the contract allows
no cap
Margin at that cap
—
Estimated margin
0.0%
Enter a proposed price to compare it with your floor.
Send the customer a written change order
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give the customer to approve before the added work begins — your details, theirs, what the change covers, 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.
Common questions
What is the difference between the walk-away price and the target price?
The walk-away price is your cost floor — loaded labor plus materials, subcontractor cost, and
overhead, with zero profit. The target price divides that floor by one minus your target margin, so it
already has the margin built in. On the defaults (8 hours at $28/hr, 25% burden, $350 materials, 10%
overhead, 20% target margin), the floor is $693.00 and the target price is $866.25 — the gap
between them is exactly the profit a 20% margin requires.
Why is loaded labor $280 for 8 hours at $28/hour, not $224?
Because payroll burden is applied to the wage before multiplying by hours: hours × wage
× (1 + burden). At the default 25% burden that adds $56 — the employer-side taxes and
insurance cost of that labor, not profit. Change-order pricing built on the $224 bare-wage number
would be quietly working at a loss on every hour billed.
Why does overhead apply to materials and subcontractor cost, not just labor?
Overhead is a percentage of the whole direct cost — loaded labor plus materials plus
subcontractor cost — because the business absorbs its overhead on every dollar that flows
through a job, not only the payroll dollars. On the defaults that direct cost is $630.00, and 10%
overhead on that full figure is $63.00.
What does “above cost, but below your target margin” mean?
It means the proposed price covers your walk-away floor and leaves some profit, just not as much as
your target margin asks for. On the defaults, proposing $750 against the $693 floor leaves $57 of
profit — but margin is profit divided by price, not by cost, so $57 / $750 is 7.6%, short of a
20% target by 12.4 points. A price can clear cost by a comfortable-looking dollar amount and still miss
the margin you were aiming for.
My contract caps change-order markup. Does that change what I can charge?
Yes, and it is the field most likely to change your answer. Enter the cap and the calculator shows the most the contract permits you to bill — direct cost plus that percentage — next to what is left of it after your own overhead. The two come out of the same allowance, so a 10% cap against 10% overhead means the change order earns exactly nothing: on the defaults the cap and the $693.00 walk-away floor are the same number. Below that, at a 5% cap, the most you may bill is $661.50 and every change order on the contract is a loss. Leave the field at zero for a contract with no cap and nothing changes.
The added work pushes the schedule. Where does that cost go?
Into "days added" and "extended general conditions ($/day)" — the supervision, site trailer, and rented plant the added scope keeps on site. It is treated as a direct cost of the change order, so overhead and margin carry on it like any other, which is the point: general conditions absorbed by the contractor are absorbed because they were never in the change order to begin with. Three days at $450 turns a $630 change order into $1,980 of direct cost and moves the target price from $866.25 to $2,722.50. Leave both at zero for work that fits inside the existing schedule.
Why does the cap warning appear before I enter a proposed price?
Because the cap is a fact about your contract rather than about the price you are considering. If the markup the contract allows is below your overhead rate, every change order under it loses money whatever you propose, and waiting for a proposed price would keep that silent on exactly the page you have not finished filling in. The other messages still wait for a proposed price, because they are comparisons against one.
Why is target margin capped at 99%?
The target price divides the cost floor by (1 − target margin). At 100% that division is by
zero; the calculator caps the input at 99% so a mistyped margin produces a very large, clearly wrong
price instead of an error or an infinite one.
Where is my data saved?
Only in this browser's local storage, as a draft you can return to, and “Copy share link”
encodes your entries into this page's own URL hash so a partner or the customer can open the exact
numbers you priced. Anonymous feature counts (that you calculated, copied a summary, or copied a share
link) are on by default and can be turned off with the button in the footer; Do Not Track and Global
Privacy Control disable them automatically. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere — a link only
travels if you send it.