Contractor Overhead & Profit Margin Calculator
Underpricing kills roofing companies slowly. Enter your fixed overhead, crew wages, billable hours, and desired margin to find your true breakeven hourly rate and the minimum bid per square that actually makes money.
Your monthly operating model
Every cost below feeds the result. Change the defaults to match your books and supplier pricing.
Insurance, vehicles, office, software, licenses
Employer taxes, workers’ comp, benefits, paid time
Exclude rain days, callbacks, meetings, and idle time
Total worker-hours consumed by one installed square (for example, 4 workers × 0.5 hours = 2 labor-hours)
Include disposal and other variable job costs
Monthly all-in cost
$121,300
$16,800 loaded labor
Revenue target (25% net)
$161,733
$40,433 target profit
Minimum target bid
$404.33/SQ
400 SQ monthly capacity
- Loaded labor rate
- $35.00/labor-hr
- Required revenue rate
- $336.94/labor-hr
- Cost before profit
- $303.25/SQ
- Net profit at target
- $101.08/SQ
Based on the assumptions above, your target selling price is $404.33/SQ. This is revenue per installed square—not just labor—and includes direct job cost, loaded payroll, monthly overhead, and the selected net margin.
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The formula most small roofers skip
Your revenue target isn't cost + profit — it's cost ÷ (1 − margin). A 25% margin on top of $18,000 in costs means you need $24,000 in revenue, not $22,500. That gap is exactly why “busy but broke” is so common in residential roofing.
Once you know your breakeven rate per crew-hour, compare it to what you're actually bidding per square. If the numbers don't reconcile, either your overhead allocation or your close-rate assumptions need work — and it's better to find that on a calculator than on a P&L.
Once the number is defensible, stop keeping it defensive — show homeowners replacement ROI on a tablet and let the resale math sell the premium tier for you.
Protect this margin on every estimate.
RoofHQ uses your real labor, material, overhead, and margin rules to price every roofing job consistently.