Job profit calculator for trade businesses
Pick a job you finished recently. Find out what it actually made you - not what you invoiced.
Gear, supplier runs, skip hire, subcontractors - everything you paid out for this job.
Count everything: the quote, the travel, the supplier run, the callback.
Everything you pay to keep the business running, whether you're on a job or not.
That's $96/hr for your time, at a 48% margin.
This is a rough guide. figrd works it out on every job from your costs, the hours logged, and the travel each trip takes.
Why what you invoiced isn't what you made
Two jobs can invoice the same and pay you completely differently. One took 9 hours and $650 of materials; the other took 14 hours, a second supplier run and a callback. If you only look at the invoice, they look identical - and you keep saying yes to the wrong jobs.
The hours are the part everyone underestimates. The quote, the travel, the supplier run and the callback are all hours the job has to pay for. Count them, and the “good little earner” often isn't.
How this calculator works
Four inputs: what you invoiced, what materials cost you, the hours the job took end to end, and what your business costs to run each week. From those it works out:
- Gross profit = invoice minus materials. This is the number most tradies stop at.
- The job's share of overhead = your weekly costs divided by a 38-hour working week - the standard full-time week under the National Employment Standards - multiplied by the hours this job took. Every hour a job occupies, it occupies your vehicle, insurance, licences and tools too.
- True profit = gross profit minus that overhead share, and true hourly rate = true profit divided by the job's hours.
- Margin = true profit as a percentage of the invoice: green above 50%, amber between 25% and 50%, red below 25%.
A worked example
Using the calculator's starting numbers as an illustration: a job invoiced at $1,800 with $650 of materials looks like $1,150 clear. But if it took 9 hours and your business runs on $1,200 a week, those 9 hours carry about $284 of overhead - rego, insurance, tools and the rest don't pause while you're on site. True profit is about $866, or roughly $96 an hour, with the margin sitting just under 50%.
Now count the two hours you forgot: the quote visit and the supplier run. Same invoice, same materials, 11 hours instead of 9. The overhead share rises to about $347 and the true hourly rate drops to about $73. Nothing about the job changed except honesty about the hours - which is exactly why jobs that felt good while you were doing them can still hollow out a week.
Count every hour, materials at what you paid
- Hours: the quote visit, travel each way, supplier runs, the work itself, clean-up, and any return visit. If the job consumed the hour, the job pays for the hour.
- Materials: what you actually paid, not what you allowed in the quote - wastage and price rises included. If you're GST-registered, use ex-GST figures.
- Weekly costs: everything it costs to be available for work. If you haven't worked that number out, the hourly rate calculator walks through what belongs in it.
Where a quick number falls short
One job is a data point, not a pattern. The expensive discovery is usually a type of job, a customer, or a suburb that keeps coming in thin - and that only shows up when every job is costed the same way, every time. A single check also can't see the callback that arrives next month against a job you closed today.
This calculator gives you the picture for one job. figrd keeps it for every job, automatically - so you can see which jobs, which customers and which payers actually pay. For the pricing side of the same arithmetic, read how to price a job or how to know if a job is profitable.
Common questions
Why can two jobs with the same invoice value pay me differently?
Because the invoice only shows what you charged - it doesn't show what it cost you in time and materials to do the work. A job that takes twice as long or uses more materials leaves you with less, even if the invoice amount looks the same.
What makes a job unprofitable once real costs are counted?
Jobs go unprofitable when all the hours are included - not just the hands-on work, but the quote, travel, supplier runs, and any callbacks. Those hours still cost your business money but often aren't counted when a tradie decides whether a job was worth doing.
Why does material cost affect job profit so much?
Materials come straight off the top of what you invoiced before you see a dollar of it as profit. If materials cost more than quoted - because of a second supplier run, wastage, or price changes - the job's profit shrinks by exactly that amount.
Should GST be in the numbers I enter?
No. If you're GST-registered, enter the invoice and materials excluding GST. The GST on your invoice is collected for the ATO, and the GST on materials comes back as a credit - neither is profit or cost to you.
What margin should a trade job make?
There's no single right number - it depends on your trade, your overhead and how much warranty risk the work carries. This calculator flags a job red below 25% of the invoice because at that level the job barely covers its share of running the business, and one callback can put it underwater.