Practical guides
Understand the math behind a profitable quote.
Six plain-English guides to the costs, percentages and comparisons that decide whether a job makes money. Every formula matches the calculators, and every example is labeled as illustrative.
All guides
How to calculate the true cost of a contractor job
A job cost is only useful when it includes everything the job consumes. This guide shows the categories, the formula, and a full worked example you can follow with your own numbers.
Read guide →How to calculate labor burden and loaded hourly cost
The hourly wage is the starting point, not the cost of an hour of work. Labor burden adds the employer costs and divides by hours that can actually be sold.
Read guide →How to recover business overhead in every job
Overhead is the cost of keeping the doors open. It does not belong to one job, but every job has to carry a share of it or the business never covers its own bills.
Read guide →Markup vs margin: why 25% is not 25%
Markup is a percentage of cost. Margin is a percentage of price. The two produce different prices from the same cost, and confusing them is one of the most expensive arithmetic mistakes in contracting.
Read guide →How to price a contractor job without guessing
Pricing is a sequence, not a single number. Build the cost first, solve for the price second, and check the bid before it leaves your desk.
Read guide →How to review estimate vs actual job cost
A finished job is the best evidence you have about whether your estimating assumptions work. Compare it category by category, not just in total, and change one thing at a time.
Read guide →How these guides are maintained
Every guide names an owner, a formula version, a last-reviewed date, a review frequency, a status and its sources. The formulas are the same contracts used by the calculators, and the examples use invented numbers rather than market averages.
- Owner: QuoteFormula editorial
- Formula version: 2026.10.1
- Review frequency: quarterly, plus any formula change
- Status: reviewed
- Sources: QuoteFormula methodology and the figures a contractor enters in this browser
Read the calculation methodology for the underlying formulas, the data sources page for what QuoteFormula does and does not use as external data, and the editorial policy for review and correction standards.