Service Pricing Wizard
Know what to charge before you send a quote. Price jobs with labour, expenses and healthy margins.
Make something useful.
Enter the details, review your result, then copy or export. No account and no AI required.
See a real task before you start
Estimate a two-hour job, add travel, materials and overhead and set your target margin.
Make it yours
Fill in the details below.
Keep this work for next time
Guests can keep using this tool. Members can save and resume drafts across devices, with no AI required.
Save or export a complete editable draft, including repeated line items. Files and passwords are never included. JSON backups stay on your device unless you choose to share them.
Your result
See the output and use its export controls when ready.
Complete the form to get started.
Quality checkpoint
- Account for unbillable time and overhead
- Recheck after actual job expenses are known
The calculator, builder or download above works independently. AI Assist is an optional explanation and writing helper, never required to complete the core task.
Quote service jobs with enough room for profit
Service businesses often underprice by counting visible hours but forgetting rent, administration, unbillable time and materials. A useful quote should cover direct costs, a sensible share of overhead and a deliberate profit target. Margin is not the same as markup, so use a margin-based calculation when that is your goal.
Before you start
Hourly rates should account for non-billable time, admin, marketing, equipment, travel and predictable downtime. A freelancer who bills only half a working week needs to recover overhead over those billable hours, not the entire month.
How to use this tool
- Enter monthly overhead and realistic billable hours, not every hour you happen to work.
- Estimate the job hours, materials and travel costs.
- Choose a target margin and review the suggested job price, cost breakdown and effective hourly rate.
A real-world example
If overhead is R20,000 a month and there are 100 billable hours, overhead allocation is R200 per billable hour before direct materials and profit.
Do not forget tax, payment fees, revision time and risk buffers where they apply. The result is a planning estimate, not a guaranteed profitable price.
Check this before you finish
- Estimate realistically billable hours per month.
- Include owner compensation and recurring overhead.
- Compare target rates against what the market will pay.
What to avoid
Do not treat every hour worked as an hour a customer will pay for.
WHAT THIS TOOL ACTUALLY DOESGenerate a rational rate baseline to refine for project complexity and client value.
Frequently asked questions
Why use billable rather than total hours?
Business administration, meetings and prospecting consume time that may not be invoiced, but their cost still needs covering.
How do I turn the result into a quote?
Use the calculated price as a starting point in the Quotation Generator, then describe the scope and exclusions clearly.
Continue with a related tool
Use the next tool when you're ready, without rethinking the whole workflow.
