Job Cost Calculator for Trades
This job cost calculator works out what a job actually costs — materials, labour, subcontractor work, equipment and your share of overheads — before you decide what to charge.
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Leave an honest Google reviewReviews are optional. Please only review based on your genuine experience.What this costing calculator works out
A quote is only as good as the cost behind it.
Materials get added up, but labour is often just "a day's work", equipment hire gets forgotten, and overhead — the van, the insurance, the time spent quoting and invoicing — rarely gets a number at all.
This calculator adds all of it up: materials, labour hours at your true hourly cost, any subcontractor work, equipment hire, and a share of your overheads. The result is one number — the true cost of the job — before markup or margin comes into it.
What goes into a job's true cost
Materials
At cost, with a wastage or contingency buffer for offcuts, waste and the odd surprise.
Labour
Hours on the job multiplied by your true cost per hour — not just the wage.
Subcontractor costs
Anything you are paying someone else to do on this job.
Equipment and plant hire
Tools or machinery hired specifically for the job.
Overhead recovery
A share of the costs that keep the business running, applied as a percentage of the direct job cost.
A worked example
A job with £500 of materials (5% wastage buffer), 16 hours of labour at a true cost of £18/hour, and 12% overhead recovery.
Materials: £500 × 1.05 = £525. Labour: 16 × £18 = £288. Direct cost: £525 + £288 = £813.
Overhead recovery: £813 × 12% = £97.56. Total job cost: £910.56.
That £910.56 — not the £288 labour or the £500 materials on their own — is what has to be recovered before the job turns a profit.
Why overhead recovery matters
It is easy to price a job on materials and labour alone and still lose money, because the van, the insurance, the phone, and the hours spent quoting and invoicing all cost something too — and none of that shows up unless it is added deliberately.
This calculator treats overhead recovery as its own visible step, not something buried inside a materials markup or a labour rate. Set it as a percentage of the direct job cost, and it is there in the total every time — consistently, for every job, without having to remember it.
How this fits with the other calculators
Job costing, labour costs and job pricing are three different questions.
True Labour Cost
Works out what one person costs per hour — the rate that feeds into this calculator's labour input.
Job Cost Calculator
This page. Adds up everything a specific job costs, with no markup or price attached.
Trade Job Pricing
Takes the next step and adds your margin to a job's costs to produce the price you quote.
Reusable structure as the business grows
A pricing catalogue built once — material costs, labour fit times, standard overhead percentages — gets faster to reuse on the next job, and the next. FieldHive keeps that catalogue, the quote it feeds, the booking, and the invoice connected, so the cost work done on one job does not have to be redone from scratch on the next.
Who this is for
Built for sole traders, subcontractors and small trade businesses who price jobs themselves and want a clear, consistent way to know the true cost before quoting — not a full construction cost-accounting system, and not a replacement for professional advice on complex or high-value contracts.
Turn the cost build-up into a connected job workflow
FieldHive keeps the enquiry, quote, job, invoice and payment connected. The costed quote becomes the job, so the figures carry through instead of being retyped.
Build the supporting figures
Use these alongside the job cost calculator.
True Labour Cost Calculator
Work out the true hourly cost of a person's time — the labour rate this calculator needs.
Calculate labour cost →Trade Business Overhead Calculator
Set a realistic overhead recovery percentage from your actual running costs.
Work out overheads →Trade Job Pricing Calculator
Add margin and tax to a job's cost to produce the price you quote the customer.
Price the job →Job costing questions
Quick answers to the questions people ask most.
Know the true cost before you send the quote
Work out what the job really costs to deliver, then price it on fact instead of guesswork. FieldHive keeps the catalogue, quote, job and invoice connected.
