Job assumptions
Use your own vehicle rate, payment rate, and overhead allocation. The defaults are only a worked example. Fee and margin are both slices of the final price, so they can jointly claim the whole ticket.
Quote check
- Whole-stop hours
- Loaded hourly rate
- Loaded labor
- Travel cost
- Direct costs + travel
- Payment fee
- Break-even quote
- Hourly on hands-on time
- Hourly on the whole stop
Price for your target
This is arithmetic from your assumptions, not a promise of profit or a recommendation to accept a job.
Common questions
Why is the loaded labor cost $0 on the example, if the example books 3 labor hours?
The example's wage is set to $0 because it models an owner-operator: your own time isn't a separate line item, so the $128.52 contribution on the default $180 quote is your pay plus profit, not profit on top of a paid wage. Enter a real hourly wage here the moment you pay yourself a set rate or hire a second detailer — the burden percent then loads payroll taxes and insurance on top of it the same way it would for an employee.
What is the break-even quote, and how is it different from the target-margin quote?
Break-even is the price that covers direct costs and the payment processing fee with zero contribution left over — on the defaults, $46.08 direct costs ÷ (1 − 3% fee) ≈ $47.51. The target-margin quote in "Price for your target" instead solves for a price where the fee and your target margin together claim their combined percentage of that price — on the defaults, 3% + 35% = 38%, so $46.08 ÷ (1 − 0.38) ≈ $74.32. Quoting at break-even leaves nothing for your time or profit; quoting below it loses money on the job.
What happens if the payment fee and target margin together claim the whole price?
The page flags it instead of printing a number. If fee percent plus margin percent reaches or passes 100%, no price can satisfy both claims at once — the tool shows this as unreachable rather than a negative or infinite "quote," which would read as real advice.
What is the difference between "hourly on hands-on time" and "hourly on the whole stop"?
Hands-on hourly divides contribution by labor hours alone (3 hours on the default job); whole-stop hourly divides the same contribution by every hour the job occupies you — labor plus travel, setup, and cleanup (4.25 hours on the default). The whole-stop number is the one that is actually comparable across jobs with different drive times, since two jobs can pay the same hands-on rate while very different amounts of the day get eaten by travel.
Does the price on this page include a deposit or my business details?
No — deposit percent and hold-days live in the separate proposal section below, which turns the same numbers into a printable quote for the customer. The pricing math above answers "what should I charge"; the proposal section turns that answer into a document with your business details and the customer's, which is only saved on your own device.
Is my pricing or customer information uploaded anywhere?
No. The calculation and the proposal both run in your browser; your saved business details and any usage counts stay in local storage on this device, never sent to a server, and the opt-out checkbox above turns usage counting off entirely.
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.