Job Estimating & Bid Calculator
The average remodeler nets about 6 cents on the dollar. Misprice a job a few points and you erase most of it. This tool burdens your labor, recovers your overhead, and turns your takeoff into a bid price that actually protects your margin.
One-time purchase · Excel / Google Sheets · no subscription · lifetime file
you must mark up cost 42.9% to earn it
Sample direct cost basis: $50,000 · overhead 18%
…and you underpriced by $6,429. Multiply by a year of jobs.
Remodelers keep about six and a half cents of net profit on every revenue dollar — the highest it's been since 1996, and still razor-thin. At that margin, a labor line you forgot to burden or a bid you marked up instead of margined doesn't shave your profit. It erases it. This tool is built to defend those points, job by job.
Source: NAHB Remodelers' Cost of Doing Business Study, 2026 edition (FY2024 data).What it does
Enter labor at the base wage. The tool adds payroll taxes, workers' comp, insurance, and benefits on top — the 30–50% burden most estimates leave out. You bid the real cost of an hour, not the number on the paycheck.
Your truck, your office, your admin time, your own pay. Set overhead as a share of revenue and every bid carries its fair share — so being busy all year actually leaves you money at the end of it.
A 30% markup is only a 23% margin. To actually earn a 30% margin you have to mark up cost 42.9%. Get that backwards on every job and you underprice all year without knowing it. The tool prices on margin and shows you the exact markup it implies — no more guessing.
Pick your target margin. The tool works backward to the bid price that hits it after overhead — and shows the net profit dollars you'll actually keep, side by side with what the common mistake would have left you.
A What-If tab shows what happens to your profit at different margins, different labor burdens, and if the job runs 5–20% over. See the risk before it's your money on the line.
See the gap
A $50,000-cost job, both priced to a "30%" target. On the left, margin done right. On the right, the same 30% applied as a markup on cost — the mistake that feels identical and costs thousands.
→ $5,271 of net profit gone on one job. Run twelve like it and that's $63,000 a year you never billed.
What it's worth — the honest version
Add 2–4 points of net margin by pricing correctly.
On a remodeler doing $1,000,000 a year, three recovered points is about $30,000 back on the bottom line — not from working more, just from bidding right. That's the number this tool is built to earn, and it usually pays for itself on the first corrected bid.
What's inside
Built in Excel with real, unlocked formulas — no macros, nothing to install. Opens in Google Sheets too. It ships pre-filled with a worked example (a bathroom remodel); overwrite the yellow cells with your job.
A one-page legend: which cells to touch, the four-step flow, and the one idea that pays for the tool.
Your readout. Set two pricing levers, get your bid price, net profit, and the correct-vs-mistake gap.
Line-item entry for materials, labor, subs, equipment, permits — with labor burden and contingency built in.
Three sensitivity tables: margin, labor burden, and cost-overrun — see the risk before you commit.
Every default sourced and cited in-cell, plus a full markup-to-margin conversion table you can keep.
Pricing
Estimating software runs $50–$200 a month — $600 to $2,400 a year, forever. This is a one-time file you own. No login, no seat, no renewal. Just a tool that makes sure the next bid is priced to keep you in business.
Instant download · 14-day money-back guarantee
Questions
Yes — and that's the point. No account, no monthly fee, no company holding your data hostage. It's a professionally built Excel file with real, unlocked formulas you can see, trust, and adjust. Everything a $100/month app does for the pricing step, without the $100/month.
Excel is ideal, but the file also opens and calculates in Google Sheets for free. There are no macros or add-ins, so nothing to install and nothing to allow.
Maybe not about carpentry. But the markup-vs-margin gap catches seasoned builders constantly, and unburdened labor is the single most common reason a busy year ends thin. If you're already pricing perfectly, the What-If tab still earns its keep by showing your downside before you sign.
Industry sources — NAHB's remodeler cost-of-doing-business study for margins, CFMA and trade references for labor burden, and the standard change-order and contingency ranges. Every default is cited in-cell on the Benchmarks tab so you can check it, not just take our word.
14-day money-back guarantee, no questions. If the tool doesn't earn its price on your first real bid, email us and we'll refund you.