FIELDHIVE CALCULATOR
True Labour Cost Calculator for Trades
You might work eight hours in a day — but quoting, travelling, collecting materials and paperwork mean only part of it can be charged. Work out what one chargeable labour hour really needs to cover.
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No email address required · Not financial or tax advice
Your target earnings
Days you cannot charge for
Time worked but not directly chargeable
Include time the business has to pay for, even when it cannot be added directly to a customer invoice. All figures are hours per week.
Based on your answers, approximately 80% of your available working time can be charged directly to customers.
Annual business overheads
Your overheads must be recovered through the hours you can actually sell, not every hour you work.
Profit and contingency
You may be available for 1,776 hours each year, but based on your answers only 1,421 of those hours can be charged directly to customers. Your labour rate has to recover your earnings and overheads through those 1,421 hours.
Where each labour hour goes
| Your target earnings | £31.67 |
| Business overheads | £11.23 |
| Contingency | £1.29 |
| Business profit | £4.91 |
| Recommended customer rate | £49.09 |
The cost of using the wrong hours
Spread across every hour worked, your overhead is £8.98 per hour. Spread across the hours you can actually charge for, it rises to £11.23 per hour.
Watch
Watch: why the install time isn’t the full labour cost
A short guide to the full labour chain — the time a job creates before, during and after the work on the tools — and why pricing only the install is what leaves trades underquoting labour.
The real cost
Your working day costs more than your hourly wage
Your labour rate has to cover far more than the time spent fitting, repairing or installing.
The income you need from the business
Holidays and days you cannot work
Time quoting and visiting sites
Travel and material collection
Paperwork and customer communication
Van, fuel, tools and insurance
Software, accountancy and overheads
Contingency and business profit
These costs cannot be spread across every hour you work. They have to be recovered through the hours you can actually charge to customers.
Where time goes
The invisible labour gap
A four-hour job rarely uses only four hours of the business.
A job may include four hours of fitting time — but that is not the only time it uses. You may also have:
Preparing the quote
Ordering or collecting materials
Travel to and from the property
Loading and unloading
Messages and calls with the customer
Invoicing and payment follow-up
The fitting time is visible on the job. The rest is easy to overlook — this difference is the invisible labour gap.
The calculator includes this time so your charge-out rate reflects how the business actually operates, rather than an ideal working week.
Your results
What the calculator shows you
Once you enter your working pattern and business costs, you will see:
Real chargeable hours
The estimated hours each year that can be charged directly to customers.
Billable percentage
The share of your available working time that produces chargeable labour.
True labour cost
The amount each chargeable hour needs to recover before profit is added.
Minimum sustainable rate
The hourly rate required to cover earnings, overheads and contingency.
Recommended charge-out rate
The customer labour rate after your chosen business profit margin.
Suggested day rate
The equivalent rate for a full chargeable day.
Common mistake
Why dividing by 40 hours often gives the wrong answer
Adding up annual costs and dividing by a 40-hour week assumes every hour can be sold.
In practice, part of the week is spent on:
Looking at new work
Preparing quotes
Driving between jobs
Collecting materials
Dealing with suppliers
Completing certificates
Sending invoices
Answering customer questions
If only 28 hours of a 40-hour week can be charged, those hours must recover the cost of the full week — so overhead per chargeable hour is higher than overhead spread across every hour worked.
Worked example
A simple example
How the same costs produce very different rates depending on the hours you divide by.
Target annual earnings
£45,000
Annual business overheads
£22,000
Available working hours
1,750
Realistically chargeable hours
1,200
The business needs to recover £67,000 through those 1,200 chargeable hours — a true labour cost of about £55.83 per chargeable hour before contingency and profit.
Dividing the same cost across all 1,750 available hours would give only £38.29 per hour. The lower figure looks more competitive, but it assumes every working hour can be added to a customer invoice.
This is an example only. Your result will depend on your working pattern, costs and required profit.
Overheads
What should be included in your labour overheads?
Include the annual costs the business must recover through its work.
Van finance or depreciation
Fuel
Vehicle insurance, servicing and tax
Tools and equipment
Tool replacement and repairs
Public liability insurance
Software and subscriptions
Phone and internet
Accountant and bookkeeping
Training and certification
Workwear and PPE
Marketing
Storage or premises
Warranty work and bad debt
Do not include material costs charged separately to a specific job — the aim is the cost of providing labour, not the full selling price of every job.
Pricing
Cost, markup and margin are not the same
Your selling rate needs to sit above your true labour cost. There are two common ways to add profit.
Markup
Markup adds a percentage to the cost. A £50 cost with a 20% markup becomes £60.
Margin
Margin measures profit as a percentage of the final selling price. A £50 cost at a 20% margin becomes £62.50.
This calculator uses profit margin — the customer rate required for your chosen percentage of the final price to remain as profit after costs are covered.
Site conditions
Your standard rate is only the starting point
Your standard rate covers the business. Some jobs still need an allowance for the site itself.
Restricted access
Long walks from parking
Occupied buildings
Night work
Security procedures
Repeated inductions
Short working windows
Heavily controlled sites
These conditions reduce the productive work completed in a day. A site uplift allows for the additional labour created by the site itself.
How to use it
Use the result as a pricing baseline
The calculator is not designed to price every job automatically. Use the result as a baseline for:
Hourly-rate work
Building fixed-price quotes
Checking your rate is sustainable
Setting labour catalogue items
Comparing estimated vs actual time
Reviewing your rate as costs change
A clear standard labour rate makes the rest of your pricing easier to review. You can still adjust individual jobs for scope, difficulty, risk and site conditions.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about pricing your labour.
Stay connected
Keep the price connected to the job
Working out the rate is only the first step — the next is keeping the priced work connected as the job moves forward.
FieldHive lets you save labour fit times, material costs and markups so they can be reused when building quotes. The quote then stays connected to the customer, booking and invoice instead of being rebuilt at each stage.
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