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Loan Calculator
Works out the monthly payment, total interest and full repayment schedule for any loan from…
Job Quote Calculator
Builds a job price from materials, waste, labour, overhead and contingency, then shows the margin you actually get rather than the markup you added.
Calculators
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No sign-up
Free, unlimited
Van, insurance, phone, quoting time and the jobs you did not win.
Enter your figures and press Calculate.
In short
Job Quote Calculator is a free online tool on inputtesthub.com that builds a job price from materials, waste, labour, overhead and contingency, then shows the margin you actually get rather than the markup you added. It needs no account, no download and no payment, and there is no daily usage limit. Everything is processed inside your own browser, so the data you paste is never uploaded to a server.
How to use the Job Quote Calculator
- Enter materials and a realistic waste allowance.
- Enter the labour hours, the rate and how many people are on site.
- Add overhead — the costs that exist whether or not you win this job.
- Choose margin or markup, and read the figure the other one actually comes to.
About the Job Quote Calculator
The Job Quote Calculator builds a job price from materials, waste, labour, overhead and contingency, then shows the margin you actually get rather than the markup you added. It runs as plain JavaScript inside the page, which means there is no upload step, no queue and no size limit imposed by a server — the only limit is your own device.
What people use it for
- Pricing a job so the margin you wanted is the margin you get.
- Seeing how many hours a job can overrun before the profit is gone.
- Showing a customer where a quote actually goes.
Details
| Margin | Profit as a share of the price you charge |
|---|---|
| Markup | Profit as a percentage added to what the job cost you |
| They are not equal | A 30% markup gives a 23.1% margin; a 30% margin needs a 42.9% markup |
| Overhead | Applied to direct cost before the margin, not after |
| Break-even overrun | Profit ÷ the cost of an hour on site |
The maths behind it
This tool uses cost = materials with waste + labour + travel + plant, plus overhead and contingency on top. Priced on margin the quote is cost ÷ (1 − margin); priced on markup it is cost × (1 + markup). Every intermediate value is shown on screen, so the result can be checked by hand.
Contingency and margin do different jobs and both are needed. Contingency covers the things that go wrong on this job — the joist that turns out to be rotten. Margin is the profit that makes the business worth running. Spending the margin on the surprise and calling the job break-even is how a trade stays busy and stays poor.
Where this tool stops
Prices one job. Whether your overhead percentage genuinely covers the business, and whether your hourly rate covers unbillable time, are separate questions — the Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator works on the second of those.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between margin and markup?
They measure the same profit against different things. Markup is profit over cost; margin is profit over price. Add 30% to a $1,000 job and you charge $1,300, make $300, and that $300 is 23.1% of the $1,300 you charged — a 23.1% margin, not 30%. To actually keep 30% of the price you have to add 42.9%. Quoting one while believing you are getting the other is one of the most reliable ways for a busy trade to work hard for very little.
What should I put in overhead?
Everything that costs money whether or not you are on a job: the van and its fuel and insurance, tools and their replacement, public liability, accounting, the phone, and the hours spent quoting work you did not win. For a small trade this commonly lands between 15% and 30% of direct cost, and setting it too low is the quietest way to lose money on a full order book.
Why does it show hours I can overrun?
Because that is the number that predicts whether a quote survives contact with the job. A quote with $400 of profit and two people on $45 an hour is gone after four and a half hours of overrun. Seeing that before you send the quote is more useful than seeing it afterwards.
Are there any usage caps on the Job Quote Calculator?
No charge and no sign-up. There is no free tier to run out of because there is no paid tier — inputtesthub.com is funded by advertising rather than by metering the page.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No. The Job Quote Calculator runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Because the work happens locally, the page also keeps working if your connection drops, and closing the tab is all it takes to discard everything.
Can I check the maths myself?
It uses cost = materials with waste + labour + travel + plant, plus overhead and contingency on top. Priced on margin the quote is cost ÷ (1 − margin); priced on markup it is cost × (1 + markup). The full working is printed under the result, so you can follow every step rather than trusting a black box.
What problem does the Job Quote Calculator solve?
In practice it gets used for three things: pricing a job so the margin you wanted is the margin you get. Seeing how many hours a job can overrun before the profit is gone. Showing a customer where a quote actually goes. It is built for exactly those cases rather than being a general-purpose tool with this bolted on.
When is the Job Quote Calculator not the right tool?
Prices one job. Whether your overhead percentage genuinely covers the business, and whether your hourly rate covers unbillable time, are separate questions — the Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator works on the second of those. Knowing where a tool stops being trustworthy matters more than the cases where it works.
Which values should I know?
Margin is Profit as a share of the price you charge. Markup is Profit as a percentage added to what the job cost you. They are not equal is A 30% markup gives a 23.1% margin; a 30% margin needs a 42.9% markup. These are printed on the page itself, so you do not have to take them on trust.
Can I rely on this for exact work?
The calculation runs in double precision and the result is shown to ten significant figures, so converting a value and converting it back returns the original. What is displayed is rounded for readability; what is copied is not.
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