Charge-out rate / Australian trade businesses
What you actually need to charge per hour
Most rates are set by looking at what the bloke down the road charges. This works it out from your wages, your on-costs, your overheads and the hours your crew can genuinely bill — then shows what your current rate is costing you over a year.
Your business 01
Hours you can actually bill 02
Leave assumptions
On-costs 03
Overheads and target 04
Materials (optional)
The rate
| Wages, leave and on-costs | — |
| Vehicle and per-person costs | — |
| Overhead recovery | — |
| Break-even cost per billable hour | — |
| Billable hours per person per year | — |
| Billable hours across the crew | — |
| Margin at your current rate | — |
How your rate compares Sample: 0
We're not going to rank your rate against numbers scraped off consumer cost guides — those quote homeowner job prices, disagree with each other by nearly two to one, and mostly cite each other. The benchmark here is built only from businesses that have run this calculator, and we'll show you the sample size so you can judge it for yourself.
Email yourself the breakdown Free
Every figure above, line by line, plus the assumptions behind it — so you can check it against your accountant's numbers before you change a price.
How this is worked out Method
Billable hours
Rostered hours across 52 weeks, less annual leave, public holidays and personal leave, less the share of worked time that never reaches an invoice. That last figure is where most rates go wrong: you pay for every hour, but you only bill some of them.
Cost per billable hour
All wages and on-costs plus vehicle and per-person costs, divided by billable hours, then overheads spread across the whole crew's billable hours.
Margin, not markup
The rate is cost ÷ (1 − margin). Adding a percentage to cost is markup, and it always leaves you less than the number suggests.
Materials
If you enter materials, the gross profit on them is offset against overheads before the labour rate is set — because materials margin is real profit that shouldn't have to be recovered twice.
What it doesn't cover
Payroll tax thresholds, award allowances, apprentice rates by year, RDOs, subcontractor labour, retentions, progress claims and variations. This is an estimate to check your pricing against, not financial, tax or accounting advice. Confirm the numbers with your accountant before you change a price.
Thinking of starting out?
Use the going out on your own calculator instead — it works backwards from what you want to earn to what you'd need to charge.