The Labour Cost Calculator from PM Consulting Inc. in North Bay, Ontario is a free interactive tool that shows contractors and home service businesses what an employee actually costs per hour. Enter the base wage, then the real costs most owners forget: payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits, retirement, paid time off, tools, truck and fuel, training, non-billable admin time, and callbacks. The calculator reveals your true all-in cost per hour and the rate you should charge to hit your profit target. Most contractors find their real cost is 40 to 80 percent higher than the wage on the paycheque. Run your numbers below, then confirm them with your accountant or bookkeeper.
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Now the hidden costs, per hour worked. The defaults are typical Canadian estimates. Replace them with your real numbers.
Estimates only. Nothing is saved or sent. Confirm your exact numbers with your accountant or bookkeeper before you set your prices.
The wage on the paycheque in. Your real cost and the rate you should charge out. Under two minutes.
Start with what you actually pay the tradesperson per hour. The number on their paycheque. This is what most contractors wrongly price their jobs off.
Payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits, retirement, paid time off, tools, truck and fuel, training, admin time, and callbacks. Use the defaults or drop in your real numbers.
Get your true all-in cost per hour and the rate you need to bill to cover it and hit your target profit margin. Then price your next job off reality.
The numbers that separate a busy business from a profitable one.
The true, all-in cost of one hour of your crew's time once every hidden cost is added on top of the wage.
Exactly how many dollars per hour disappear into taxes, comp, benefits, tools, vehicles, downtime, and callbacks.
The exact hourly rate you need to bill to cover your real cost and still make your target profit, not just break even.
How many times the wage your real cost actually is, so you have a simple rule of thumb for quoting on the fly.
The dollars per billable hour you give away every time you price a job off the wage instead of the real cost.
A realistic starting point to take to your accountant or bookkeeper so your pricing is built on facts, not a gut feeling.
You pay your tech $45 an hour, so you price your jobs off $45 an hour. That single habit quietly costs a lot of contractors their profit. Because $45 is the wage, not what the person actually costs you.
Add it up, and most owners never do. Payroll taxes. Workers comp. Health and benefits. Retirement. Paid time off and statutory holidays. Tools and equipment. Truck, fuel, and maintenance. Training and licenses. Non-billable admin time. Callbacks and warranty work. None of them feel like much on their own. Stacked together, they can push that $45 wage up to a real cost of $65, $75, even $80 an hour, before you have made a single dollar of profit.
So every job you quoted thinking labour was $45 may have been giving away $20 to $35 an hour on every billable hour without you knowing it. Multiply that across every person on your books, every job, every hour, all year. That is how a shop can turn over a million dollars and the owner still takes home less than the lead hand swinging the hammer for him.
You are not bad at running a business. You just may not know what your team actually costs you per hour. The fix is not complicated. Run the calculator above, then call your accountant, or at the very least a bookkeeper, and confirm your real numbers: your true labour cost, your overhead, and your break-even hourly rate. Then set your price for profit on top of that, on purpose.
You do not have to become an accountant. You just have to know your numbers, and then keep them in front of you so you never drift off them again. That last part is where a real-time dashboard earns its keep: your true costs, your close rate, and your margins on one screen, so pricing stays honest on every quote. When you are ready, book a free AI Lead Audit and we will walk through it together.
The calculator shows you your real cost per hour. A free AI Lead Audit shows you how to keep your true costs, close rate, and margins on one screen, so your pricing stays honest and your profit stops leaking. Paul Meyers will walk through your numbers and your systems with you.
Book Your Free AI Lead AuditFree. 20 minutes. No obligation. Just clarity on your real numbers.