Your time belongs in the cost.
A job can leave cash in the bank while paying very little for your own work. This review separates an owner pay allowance from employee costs and the amount left after included costs. The allowance is a value you assign to your time. It does not determine payroll, a deductible expense, taxes, or take-home income.
Start with a written quote and a few completed visits. Include preparation, cleanup, and paid travel. Put spending on fuel, parking, supplies, and other job-specific items in the appropriate cost fields. Allocate overhead once per visit using your own method, and avoid adding the same cost twice. For a walkthrough, read how to review a service job’s profit.
One extra hour changes the picture.
In our fictional solo cleaning example, the customer pays $160. Three owner hours at an entered $30 allowance cost $90; supplies cost $10, travel and other costs $20, and allocated overhead $15. With no payment fees, $25 remains after $135 of included costs.
Two completed visits each take four owner hours. The $120 owner allowance plus $45 in other costs leaves −$5 at the same $160 price. A revised $190 price leaves $25 under those same four-hour assumptions. Alternatively, genuinely reducing the work to three owner hours at $160 also leaves $25. The tool cannot establish whether either change is acceptable to the customer or sufficient to cover omitted costs.
How the comparison works
For each visit: owner allowance = owner hours × owner hourly allowance; employee cost = total employee person-hours × the entered employee hourly cost. The original estimate converts employee count × each employee’s on-site and paid travel hours into person-hours. Actual and revised visits take total person-hours directly.
Included costs = owner allowance + employee cost + supplies + other direct costs + allocated overhead + percentage payment fee + fixed payment fee. Amount left = customer price − included costs. Remaining percentage = amount left ÷ customer price × 100; it is undefined at a zero customer price.
The minimum price for a target accounts for both the fixed fee and the percentage fee on the price. It finds the first supported cent price that leaves at least the target after rounded costs. A price outside the supported range is shown as unavailable. This is a cost-based calculation, not a market-price recommendation.
Actual visits use the same entered customer price, pay rates, overhead, and fee settings. Each visit is calculated separately; the actual average divides their summed results by the visit count. Costs that changed rates or customer price belong in a different review. Blank revised fields use the actual average, or the original estimate with no visits, rounded to two decimals. An explicit zero overrides that baseline.
Use weekly capacity as a quick check.
Revised owner hours per week = owner hours per visit × visits per week. The amount left per week uses the same frequency. Every two weeks is 0.5 visits per week; every four weeks is 0.25. A calendar month is not exactly four weeks. Available owner time means the time remaining for this job after other commitments.
This does not schedule dates, check crew availability, predict demand, or optimize routes. Reducing service frequency may increase work per visit, so revise those inputs too. Zero owner hours makes owner-based visit capacity undefined; it does not establish unlimited business capacity.
Precision, scope, and sources
Money inputs are USD with at most two decimals. Each labor line and percentage fee rounds to the nearest cent, half up. Actual averages may contain fractional cents and are rounded only for display; revised baseline inputs round to two decimals. Amounts and hourly rates are capped at $1 million, owner hours at 168 per visit, and the actual log at 12 visits. All inputs must be finite and nonnegative; the percentage fee must be below 100%.
This original comparison applies the general practice of tracking revenue and expenses described in the SBA’s financial management guidance. Its startup-cost guidance illustrates the importance of identifying different cost types. These sources do not supply our example rates, endorse Daily Spark, or validate your pricing.
Formula v1.0.0 · Reviewed October 5, 2026. The result excludes income taxes and any costs you omit. It is not accounting, payroll, legal, or financial advice. Inputs stay in this browser; saving is optional and device-specific. See our methodology and privacy policy.