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Markup, margin & job costing calculator
Work out what a job really costs you — materials and waste, the true cost of an hour of labour, overheads, setup spread across the batch, rejects — then see the price, the margin, and exactly what a discount does to your profit. Nothing you type is sent to us or stored, unless you ask for a PDF copy.
Where the money goes
What the job costs you
Per good unit, and for the whole batch. Rejects are already carried by the units you can actually sell.
| Cost | Per unit | Whole batch | Share |
|---|
What that discount is really costing you
A discount does not come off your price, it comes off your profit — and the two are very different sizes.
If the batch were a different size
Setup, delivery and the other batch costs do not shrink, so a short run costs far more each. At the same selling price, this is where a small order stops being worth taking.
| Batch size | Cost each | Profit each | Margin |
|---|
Take it with you
Produces a clean one-page costing sheet — your figures, the assumptions behind them and the breakdown. In the print dialog choose Save as PDF as the destination to keep it as a file.
Best done from a laptop or desktop — phone browsers vary in what they will save.
Keep a copy
A one-page PDF of your figures and the result.
Your figures are used only to make the PDF. We don't keep them.
This is one job. Vali does it for every job, automatically.
Working a price out once, by hand, is the easy part. Vali keeps your material costs, labour rates and overheads in one place, applies them to every quote and job card, and tells you what you actually made once the work is done — instead of you finding out at year end.
Also free: the VAT calculator and the VAT deadline checker.
Markup and margin are not the same thing
This is the one that costs people money. Markup is measured against what the job cost you; margin is measured against what you sold it for. Add 50% markup to a R100 cost and you charge R150 — but that is a 33% margin, not 50%. Aim for a 50% margin on that same job and you must charge R200, which is a 100% markup. Quote on markup while thinking in margin and you will be short every single time.
The costs people forget
Waste. You buy a full sheet and use most of it. The offcut is yours to pay for, so it belongs in the cost of the part.
What an hour of labour actually costs. A R100 wage is not R100 of cost. Add unemployment insurance, the skills development levy, paid leave, public holidays and sick days, and you are nearer R130. Cost jobs at the bare wage and you quietly give away that difference on every hour you sell.
Overheads. Rent, electricity, insurance and the vehicles carry on whether or not you are busy, and no job volunteers to pay them. Divide what they cost you each month by the hours you actually charge out, and every one of those hours has to recover that figure before there is any profit at all.
Setup on a short run. Three hours of setting up is three hours whether you make ten or a thousand. On ten it is the single biggest thing in the price, and on a thousand it disappears — which is why the same part cannot carry the same price at both.
Rejects. If one in twenty fails, the nineteen you can sell have to carry the cost of the one you cannot.
About the numbers
Every figure here excludes VAT. Mixing a VAT-inclusive cost with an exclusive price is a quick way to a wrong answer — our VAT calculator will strip it out for you. This is a costing aid, not financial advice; check anything that matters with your accountant.
Markup and costing questions answered
01 How do I convert markup to margin?
Divide the markup by one plus the markup. A 25% markup is 0.25 ÷ 1.25 = 20% margin. Going the other way, margin ÷ (1 − margin) gives the markup: a 20% margin is 0.2 ÷ 0.8 = 25% markup.
02 What does a discount do to my profit?
Far more than the discount percentage suggests. On a 30% margin, a 10% discount takes a third of the profit away: sell at R100 with R30 profit, discount to R90 and the profit is R20. Type the discount in and the calculator shows the profit before and after.
03 What is my break-even price?
The price at which the job makes nothing: materials plus waste, labour at its true hourly cost, the share of overheads those hours must recover, setup spread over the batch, and rejects. Any price below it loses money even if it covers the materials. The calculator shows it before profit is added, so you know where the floor is when a customer pushes for a lower price.
04 Is anything I type stored?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent to us.
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