Free tool
What does an hour of your crew actually cost?
Not the wage. The wage plus the employer half of payroll taxes, workers’ comp, paid time off, the truck, the tools, and the hours you pay for that never reach an invoice. Most operators are bidding against the wage and wondering where the money went.
Runs in your browser. No account, no email required, and nothing you type is sent to us or stored anywhere except on this device.
Your numbers
Fill in what you know. The answer updates as you type, and blanks count as zero, so a partial fill still gives you a floor rather than nothing.
1 · The wage
A name or a role. Only used to label the result. Nothing is sent anywhere.
From your payroll register. The actual rate, not a rounded one. Salaried, divide by 2,080.
Days per year, including holidays you pay for. Leave at 0 if you do not offer any yet.
2 · Taxes and insurance
Your annual federal unemployment tax for this employee, from Form 940 or your payroll provider's tax summary, divided by their paid hours. It is a small line.
0.6% of the first $7,000 in wages, as of 2026, per IRS Form 940 instructions. Credit-reduction states run higher.
Your assigned rate, from your state unemployment account.
New-employer rates in most states land between 1% to 4%, higher for construction, as of 2026, per U.S. DOL, state UI provisions. Your exact rate is on the notice from your state unemployment agency.
Dollars per $100 of payroll, off your policy declarations page for the class code this employee works under. Rates differ by trade and by state.
Published averages as of 2025, per Kickstand Insurance rate guides. Your class code, your state, and your claims history set the real rate, sometimes far from these.
3 · The truck and the tools
One truck's monthly all-in: payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance. We split it across the techs and the hours.
How many techs ride that truck.
Tool and equipment budget for the year. We spread it over 2,080 paid hours.
Your monthly share of the premium, per employee. 0 if you do not offer it yet.
4 · The hours
Share of paid hours that land on an invoice. Drive time, shop time, and warranty callbacks are not billable. Start at 80% and correct it once you have time entries.
What an hour costs you
Put in an hourly wage and the answer appears here. Everything else makes it more accurate.
Where this worksheet came from
This is one of six printable worksheets in the pricing strategy playbook, reproduced here in full and for free. The other five price a job up from the burdened rate, track gross margin by service line, model a commission before you offer it, total your overhead per billable hour, and convert markup to margin. You can read all of them in the example pack without an account.
This calculator does arithmetic on numbers you supply. It is not tax, accounting, insurance, or legal advice, and it does not tell you what to charge. The only figures it supplies rather than asks for are the employer share of Social Security and Medicare, and those are stamped with the year they are from and linked to the source. Everything else comes off your own payroll register, your own policy declarations page, and your own Form 940.