Plan overhead recovery and break-even: find the revenue and jobs you must sell to cover fixed overhead at your real contribution margin — plus overhead % of revenue and an optional hours view. “Recovery rate” here means how much revenue (or how many jobs) your numbers need to cover fixed overhead — not a one-size industry %. Built for owners planning capacity — not for homeowners shopping a project budget.
Exact can be fractional; ceil is the whole jobs you need to book.
Self-serve math for business owners. Not consulting, coaching, tax, legal, or insurance advice. This page does not rebuild a full wage→burden→bill-rate stack (see billable hourly rate) or a full job price stack (see job pricing). Not a homeowner project-cost tool.
Fixed overhead is recovered from contribution margin — what remains after job-direct (variable) costs:
Unlike P1 (bill rate from wage + burden + OH + margin) and P2 (full job price), this page plans capacity from contribution margin only — so we do not re-apply the same fixed OH twice.
Once you know contribution per job, price each bid in the contractor job pricing calculator so labor, materials, contingency, and margin hit the contribution you planned for overhead recovery.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Fixed overhead / month | $10,000 |
| Average job price | $1,000 |
| Average direct job cost | $600 |
| Contribution / job | $400 (40% CM) |
| Target profit (optional) | $5,000 |
| Working days | 20 |
| Trucks | 2 |
Jobs to break even = 10,000 ÷ 400 = 25.00 (ceil 25). Break-even revenue = $25,000. To hit $5,000 profit: 37.5 jobs (sell 38), revenue $37,500. Per day $1,250; per truck $12,500.
Mode 2 example: annual OH $120,000 ÷ revenue $400,000 = 30% overhead. Mode 3 example: $10,000 ÷ $50 contribution/hr = 200 hours.
Overhead recovery means covering your fixed overhead (rent, office, core insurance, salaried admin, software) out of the contribution margin your jobs earn — price minus direct job cost. This calculator shows how much revenue, or how many jobs, it takes to recover that overhead each month or year. See the methodology for the exact formulas.
This page does not give a universal or recommended %. Enter your fixed overhead and your average job price and direct cost (or your contribution margin %). The calculator then shows your break-even revenue and jobs to break even; switch to Overhead % of revenue and enter your revenue to see overhead as a % of your revenue. The result comes from your own inputs — not a target to copy.
Overhead % = overhead ÷ revenue — a snapshot of how much of your revenue goes to fixed overhead. Break-even asks how much revenue (or how many jobs) you need at your contribution margin before there is any profit.
Often, yes. A fully loaded sell rate from the billable hourly rate calculator usually already recovers fixed overhead. If you use it in Hours at contribution $/hr mode, don’t count overhead twice — prefer Jobs / revenue to break even, or enter contribution $/hr (price − variable cost). To price individual jobs, use job pricing.
This page doesn’t coach. The math levers are the inputs above: contribution per job and fixed overhead. To check the numbers behind them, price jobs to your own margin in job pricing, check your bill rate in the billable hourly rate calculator, and confirm loaded crew cost in the labor burden calculator. See markup vs margin if margin vs markup is mixed up in your pricing.
Default is monthly. Switch to annual for a year view, or divide monthly results by ~4.33 for a rough weekly check.
Enter trucks/crews to see break-even revenue (and jobs) per unit. It divides the period target evenly — adjust if crews are not equal.
Math can say 37.5 jobs; you cannot sell half a job. Ceil is the whole jobs you must book to clear the target.
No. It is for contractors and home-service business owners planning overhead recovery — not a homeowner project budget.