Stop bidding blind. Cost every job, price for real margin, protect scope with change orders, and set aside taxes — with calculators and courses built for the trades.
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Contractors lose money in the gap between the bid and the bank account. A job can look profitable on the estimate and still lose cash once labor burden, unbilled hours, material escalation, and slow-paying GCs are counted. NerdyGirl University’s contractor tools close that gap with the exact math a CPA would run.
Trades businesses carry costs most templates ignore: workers’ comp by class code, employer payroll taxes, equipment depreciation, and the unbillable time between jobs. Your “$35/hour” laborer often costs $52+ fully burdened once those are added. Our Fully-Burdened Labor Rate Calculator turns real payroll, tax, insurance, PTO, and utilization numbers into a true hourly cost, so your bids protect margin instead of quietly eroding it.
Winning a job at a price that doesn’t cover overhead is how busy contractors go broke. The Bid & Markup Calculator separates markup from margin (a 25% markup is only a 20% margin) and shows the price you must charge to hit a target net profit after burden and overhead. The Job Cost Calculator then tracks labor, materials, and subs against that estimate so you can read Budget-vs-Actual on every project.
Most trades owners overpay because deductions — mileage, tools, materials, home office, and Section 179 equipment — go untracked until April. The Quarterly Tax Estimator projects net profit and the amount to set aside each quarter, and the QuickBooks for Contractors course sets up a chart of accounts, projects, and change orders the right way from day one.
Add every cost of employment on top of base wage: employer payroll taxes (FICA, FUTA, SUTA), workers’ compensation by class code, general liability, benefits, PTO, and paid non-working time. Divide the total annual cost by the actual billable hours (not 2,080) to get the fully-burdened hourly rate. A $35/hour worker is commonly $48–$55 fully burdened.
Markup must cover overhead AND target profit, and markup is not the same as margin. To net a 20% profit margin you need roughly a 25% markup; for 30% margin, about a 43% markup. Start from your fully-burdened cost, add overhead recovery, then apply markup for profit — the Bid & Markup Calculator does this automatically.
A common rule of thumb is 25–30% of net profit set aside for federal self-employment and income tax, plus state tax where applicable. The exact number depends on entity type and deductions, so the Quarterly Tax Estimator projects it from your actual profit rather than a flat guess.
Once you have employees, subs, or job costing needs, yes — you need to track profit per job, not just total revenue. Our QuickBooks for Contractors course sets up Projects, estimates, and change orders so you can see which jobs actually made money.