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Attacks the service-specific failure: delivery hours are systematically undercounted, so prices that look profitable are quietly funded by unpaid time.
Enter your numbers first, then use the niche guidance below to interpret the output against agencies, consultants, cleaners, trainers, and any business selling time-based or package services..
Service pricing hides its costs inside the calendar. A $6,500 monthly package that 'takes about 30 hours' usually consumes 45 once meetings, revisions, email, and project management are counted, and the margin difference between those two numbers is the difference between a business and a grind. Honest delivery-hour counting comes before any pricing math.
Track or estimate the true hours per engagement, multiply by loaded labor cost, add direct expenses, and enter the result as cost of goods sold against the engagement's revenue. The calculator returns the real margin; the guidance below covers the overhead loading and scope-creep effects that erode it after launch.
Delivery cost per engagement is true hours times the loaded hourly cost of the people delivering, plus direct expenses like subcontractors and tools attributable to the engagement. Margin is revenue minus delivery cost, divided by revenue. Overhead either loads into the hourly cost or sits in operating expenses; pick one convention and keep it.
An agency audits its $6,500 monthly retainer. Tracked delivery time is 44 hours across strategy, production, meetings, and management, at a $52 loaded hourly cost, plus $112 in tools attributed to the account: $2,400 total delivery cost.
Engagement gross margin is 63 percent, healthy for agency work, but the audit's real finding is the 44 hours against the 30 the package was priced on. At the assumed 30 hours the margin would have been 75 percent; the 14-hour gap is unbilled scope that pricing or boundaries must recover.
Interpretation assumptions: Amounts and percentage assumptions here are illustrative planning inputs, not measured industry averages. Compare results with your own costs and records; any displayed threshold bands are illustrative and do not establish typical business performance.
Wages plus employer taxes, benefits, and a utilization adjustment, what an hour of delivery actually costs the business, typically 1.3 to 1.6 times the raw wage.
Estimate hours generously, price for margin at that estimate, and track actuals from the first engagement. Adjust at the third engagement, not the thirtieth.
Cost math sets your floor; value sets the ceiling. Price toward value, but never below the floor this calculator makes visible.
The business-level view after overhead.
Billing structure for retainers and scope extras.
The loaded labor rates the delivery math requires.
Focuses on food cost, labor scheduling, delivery platform fees, waste, rent, and the difference between menu-level and month-level margin.
Connects margin to occupancy, average daily rate, OTA commission, housekeeping load, utilities, amenities, and event or food revenue mix.
This calculator is a planning aid, not pricing or accounting advice. Hour tracking and overhead allocation conventions vary; consistency matters more than the convention chosen.
Your results will appear here
Enter your financials and click Calculate to compare gross and net margin against illustrative planning thresholds. Thresholds are illustrative planning bands for scenario review, not observed industry averages or benchmarks from third-party reports.