Free loaded labor rate calculator

A loaded labor rate is what one hour of a technician’s time actually costs your business, not just the wage. It adds payroll taxes, benefits, the truck, and a share of office overhead and owner pay, then divides by the hours you can actually bill. It is the floor every job has to beat before you make a dollar.

It is both, and a step further. Your labor burden is the extra cost of employing someone on top of their wage: payroll taxes, insurance, benefits, and the truck. A plain labor burden or labor cost calculator stops there and tells you what an employee costs. This tool takes that true cost of an employee and divides it by the hours you can actually bill, then adds overhead and your own pay, so you get the number that actually sets your price: your cost per billable hour, and the rate to charge above it. Same starting point as an employee cost calculator, carried all the way to what you bill.

Add a tech’s annual wage, payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUI), benefits and truck costs to get the field cost. Add a share of company overhead, the office, software, marketing and owner pay, spread across the team’s billable hours. Divide the total by the hours that tech actually bills in a year, not the hours you pay. That number is your true cost per billable hour.

Because the wage is the smallest piece. A 28 dollar wage often carries 90 dollars or more once taxes, benefits, the truck, the office and your own pay are loaded in and divided by billable hours instead of paid hours. The gap is exactly what a wage-based flat rate forgets, and it is why busy shops still run thin.

Both, and they are not the same thing. Your pay is what the business owes you for the work and the risk, so it belongs in cost, like any other salary. Net profit is what is left after everyone, including you, is paid. A rate that skips your salary and calls the leftover profit is really just paying you out of margin and calling it a win. Put your pay in as a real cost, then set a net profit target on top of it.

Most trades shops bill 60 to 80 percent of the hours they pay for. The rest is drive time, shop time, training and slow days. Utilization is the single biggest lever on your cost: the same technician at 85 percent utilization costs far less per billable hour than at 65 percent. Raising it is the cheapest way to lower your rate.

Yes, and most rates forget both. Overtime is paid at time and a half, so the extra half on those hours is real cost a straight wage misses. Card and financing fees come off the top of every ticket you run, usually two to three and a half percent, so a price that looks profitable quietly is not once the processor takes its cut. The calculator lets you switch on overtime and set a blended fee, so your break-even floor and your rate both account for them.

No. Gross margin is what is left after direct job cost. Net profit is what is left after everything, including the office and your salary. A rate can show a healthy 45 percent gross margin and still leave only 10 percent net, or less. Gross margin is not take-home, and confusing the two is how shops underprice.

Enough to clear your true cost plus your target net profit. If your true cost is 92 dollars an hour and you want 10 percent net, you bill about 102 dollars. If that feels high for your market, look at utilization and overhead before you discount, because cutting price below your true cost means losing money on every job.

That is exactly what the tool is for. The number is not an opinion, it is the floor your own costs set. If it lands above your market, the fix is almost never to price below it, because that just loses money faster on a full schedule. Look at your two real levers first: billable utilization and overhead. Billing more of the hours you already pay for, or trimming overhead, lowers the rate honestly. Cutting price below your true cost only hides the leak.

It is your labor rate, the cost and margin on one hour of a tech’s time. A real invoice also carries materials and equipment, and those carry their own markup on top. So this number sets the labor line on a job, not the whole ticket. Think of it as the floor every billable hour has to clear before materials, fees, or profit enter the picture.

No, and it is not trying to. This is a decision and awareness tool, a fast and honest estimate that shows you the floor you cannot price below and starts the conversation about your rate. Your accountant’s real numbers will sharpen it. Treat it as the back of the napkin that tells you whether your pricing is even close, then bring the precision in from your actual books.

Fully burdened means the wage with every real cost of employment loaded on top: payroll taxes, workers comp, insurance, benefits, and the truck. Fully burdened, loaded, and true cost all point at the same idea, what an hour of a tech really costs before you make a dime. The burden alone commonly adds 40 to 70 percent over the bare wage; this calculator carries it further by spreading office and owner overhead across billable hours, which is the cost your price actually has to beat.

There is no single right number, it depends on your costs, not your trade. Residential service shops commonly bill somewhere around 90 to 150 dollars an hour for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical work, but that is a market range, not your rate. The point of this calculator is to find yours from the bottom up: your true cost per billable hour plus the profit you want, so you price off your own numbers instead of the shop down the road.