Pricing · about 3 min
What do I have to charge per hour to survive?
Work backwards from overhead, headcount, and billable efficiency to the rate that covers it all.
- Break-even rate
- Target rate at your margin
- Billable efficiency
Your field team
Everything else
What you must charge
Break-even rate
$141.41
Covers cost. Makes nothing.
Rate at 15% margin
$166.36
The number to price from
Revenue at that rate
$2.6M
If you bill every billable hour
What each billed hour carries
- Burdened labor$67.10
- Overhead$74.31
- Margin$24.95
Every billed hour has to carry the cost of the unbilled ones. That is why the burdened wage of $41.60 becomes $67.10 per hour billed.
The efficiency problem
Paid hours
24,960
Billable hours
15,475
Paid, not billed
9,485
$395K of wage cost
Moving billable efficiency from 62% to 67% would drop your break-even rate to $130.86 — the same money, without raising a single price. Five points of efficiency is usually worth more than a rate increase, and customers never notice it.
Illustrative only. Assumes 2,080 paid hours per technician per year and a flat burden rate. Real pricing also has to account for materials margin, membership pricing, overtime, seasonality, and what your market will actually bear. Use this to find the floor, not to set a price book.
These figures are planning estimates, not a valuation, quote, or financial advice. Every business is different — use the output to frame the conversation, then check it against your own books.