Your payers
Name your own row “private pay”, “self-pay” or “cash”. The last four columns may be blank (100% paid, 30 days, 4-hour visits, 0 minutes of travel). Use your own remittances for the paid share and the average wage of the caregivers on that payer's cases.
Your cost loading
Paste your payers, then click Compare.
Result
Margin per billed hour, by payer
| Payer | Bill rate | Paid share | Loaded cost per hour | Margin per hour | Margin | Monthly margin | Each +$1 wage costs / month | Owed to you |
|---|
Rate for your target margin, and if you dropped a payer
| Payer | Rate for target margin | Gap to current rate | Break-even refill | Per year at 25% | at 50% | at 75% | at 100% | Read |
|---|
How it is calculated
Loaded cost per billed hour: wage × (1 + ½ × overtime share) × (1 + payroll tax % + workers' comp %) × (1 + unpaid travel ÷ billed hours per visit) + office cost per hour. Collected per hour: bill rate × share paid. Margin per hour: collected − loaded cost. Rate for target margin: loaded cost ÷ (share paid × (1 − target margin)). Break-even refill: a payer's margin per hour ÷ your best private-pay row's; caregivers are paid by the hour worked, so an unfilled hour earns and costs nothing. Wage raise cost: the loaded cost re-run with the wage one dollar higher, times monthly hours.
Not modelled: minimum-shift and cancellation rules, mileage reimbursement, caregiver turnover and training cost, health benefits, sick and holiday pay, state or program billing rules and rate floors, live-in and overnight pay rules, taxes, and whether wage-and-hour law applies to a given worker. Unverified: tested on hand-calculated examples, not on a real agency's books. It tells you what a payer costs you per hour, not whether to serve it.
Common questions
What margin should a home care agency aim for?
Gross margin on billed hours commonly lands somewhere in the 25 to 35 percent range for private-pay care, but the right figure depends on your office cost, local wages and mix of payers. The tool defaults to a 25 percent target, lets you change it, and solves the bill rate that reaches it for every payer from your own wage, burden, travel and paid share.
How do I price a home care hour from the caregiver wage?
Load the wage with employer payroll taxes and workers' compensation, add any overtime premium, spread the unbilled drive time over the billed hours of the visit, add the office cost per hour, then divide by the share you actually collect and by one minus your target margin. Paste your payers and the tool does it per payer and shows the gap to your current rate.
Why does a payer that looks fine lose money per hour?
Because the bill rate is compared with the wage in most people's heads, not with the loaded cost. Payroll tax, workers' comp, overtime, unpaid travel and office cost can add well over a third to the wage, and a rate that clears the wage can still sit under the cost of the hour. The warnings name any payer that bills less than the loaded cost.
What does each extra dollar of caregiver wage cost me?
The tool prices it exactly: for each payer it re-runs the cost with the wage one dollar higher and multiplies by that payer's monthly hours, then totals them. Wage pressure moves most agencies' margin more than the bill rate does, so it is the number to have before a raise or a hiring bonus.
Should I drop a low-margin payer?
Not from one number. Caregivers are paid by the hour worked, so an unfilled hour earns and costs nothing. The break-even refill is the share of the freed hours that private-pay clients must take for dropping the payer to break even, and the table prints the annual result at 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent refill. You supply the estimate, because only you know your local demand.
What counts as a private-pay row?
Any row whose name starts with private, self-pay, cash, direct, family or out-of-pocket. The best of them is the benchmark for the refill comparison.
Is client or caregiver information involved, and is my data uploaded?
No. Every row is a payer with period totals; no client, caregiver or case information is asked for or accepted. Nothing you type is sent to a server, there are no accounts or cookies, and it works offline once the page has loaded.
Does this replace payroll software, billing software or an accountant?
No. It does arithmetic on figures you type. It does not file claims, run payroll, read payer contracts, track licensing or give tax, legal, wage-and-hour or insurance advice, and it does not tell you which programs to serve.