Free Tool

True Job Cost / Break-Even Calculator

Materials and labor are only part of what a job costs you. Add in overhead - insurance, vehicles, tools, admin time - and you get the number you actually need to break even before any profit.

Materials cost ($)Direct labor cost ($)Equipment / other direct costs ($)Overhead allocation (% of direct costs)

True total job cost

Break-even price

Break-even price is your true cost with zero profit added - the floor you shouldn't price below, not what you should charge. Once you have this number, run it through the profit margin calculator to add the markup you actually want on top. Overhead allocation is a rough percentage-of-direct-costs estimate, not a substitute for tracking your real annual overhead against total job volume.

Real costs, not a spreadsheet guess

Punchlist tracks bid-vs-actual profitability automatically using real job costs, so you know your true cost on every job without rebuilding this math by hand each time.