Start by entering what the best technician in your market currently earns per hour. This isn't necessarily what you pay your techs right now — it's the going rate for top talent in your area. Think of it as the benchmark: what would you have to offer to attract the most skilled, experienced person available?

Using the market rate as your starting point is intentional. If you base your pricing on what you currently pay, you lock yourself into your current cost structure with no room to grow. By pricing off the top of the market, you build in the capacity to compete for the best people without having to raise your prices later.

This percentage is added on top of the Top Tech Rate to give you a recruiting and retention edge. The idea is simple: if you price your labor based on paying exactly what the market pays, you can only ever match the competition. You can never beat it.

The Competitive Pay Increase is the buffer that lets you offer more. When a great tech is choosing between your company and a competitor, being able to say "we pay above market" is a meaningful advantage — and this tool makes sure your pricing absorbs that cost rather than it coming out of your margins.

A 15% buffer is a reasonable starting point for most markets, but you can adjust this based on how aggressively you want to position your compensation. Some owners set it at 10% in stable markets, others go to 20% or more in high-demand areas with a lot of technician turnover.

A technician's day doesn't start and end at the job site. Between driving to calls, picking up parts, handling paperwork, waiting on hold with warranty departments, and traveling between jobs, a significant portion of their paid hours are not billable to any customer.

The Productivity Rate is the percentage of a tech's total paid hours that actually generate revenue. If a tech works 8 hours and is on billable jobs for 4 of them, their productivity rate is 50%. This is extremely common in service businesses — 50% is a realistic industry average, and many companies run even lower when you account for travel time in spread-out service areas.

The calculator accounts for this automatically. When productivity is set to 50%, it doubles the effective hourly cost before adding overhead and profit — so your flat rate prices genuinely cover what your labor actually costs you, not just what you see on the time card.

Labor Burden covers the real cost of an employee beyond their wage — payroll taxes, workers' comp, health insurance, retirement contributions, and any other benefits. A typical labor burden is 20–30% of base pay.

Business Overhead covers everything it costs to keep the lights on that isn't directly tied to a job: vehicles, insurance, office staff, marketing, software, and your own salary as the owner. Divide your annual overhead by your annual billable revenue to find this percentage.

Desired Profit is exactly what it sounds like — the margin you want to keep after all costs are covered. This is not the same as overhead. It's the return on your risk and investment as a business owner. 15–30% is a healthy target range for service businesses.

Parts are not sold at cost. Your price for a part must cover not just what you paid for it, but also the time spent sourcing it, the cost of carrying inventory, the risk of having the wrong part, and your contribution to overhead from the materials side of the job.

The multiplier table applies a markup based on what the part cost you. The logic is tiered — lower-cost parts get a higher multiplier, and higher-cost parts get a lower one. A $2 capacitor might carry a 5× multiplier while a $400 compressor might carry a 1.69× multiplier. This reflects the real-world economics of parts handling: the smaller the part, the more the overhead cost of handling it represents as a proportion of its value.

The multipliers are pre-set based on proven industry pricing models, but you can edit any row or add your own tiers on the Setup page to match your business's cost structure.

The calculator produces four prices from every job. All four start from the same retail price — only the discounts differ.

• Retail Price — the standard price you'd quote any customer walking in off the street. No discounts applied.
• Add-On Price — a discounted rate for additional work done on the same visit. If a customer agrees to a second repair while you're already there, you can offer a break because your travel and setup costs are already covered.
• Member Price — the rate for customers enrolled in your maintenance or service plan. A small discount rewards loyalty and helps with retention.
• Member Add-On Price — the deepest discount, combining both the member benefit and the add-on benefit for the best customers who are already on-site.

Set your discount percentages on the Setup page. The pricing summary on the calculator will show all four prices live as you build the job.