KNOW YOUR NUMBER
How much do you need to sell each month?
Work out the monthly sales and number of jobs you need to cover overhead and your own pay, then what it takes to hit a profit goal. Uses your margin and average invoice.
01Your numbers
The starting numbers are an illustrative example, not industry benchmarks. Replace them with your own.
HOW IT WORKS
Break-even calculator
Your break-even point is the sales you need before the business makes a dollar. Take monthly overhead plus the pay you need as the owner, and divide by your gross margin: the share of each sale left after the job's own labor, materials and subs. Divide by your average invoice to turn that into jobs per month and per day.
- 01Enter your monthly overhead: the costs you pay even with no jobs on the board.
- 02Add the pay you need as the owner each month.
- 03Enter your gross margin on jobs and your average invoice.
- 04Add a monthly profit goal to see the target on top of break-even.
A WORKED EXAMPLE
A break-even example
An illustrative shop has $18,000 of monthly overhead and pays the owner $7,000, so $25,000 has to be covered. At a 45% gross margin that takes $55,555.56 of sales. With a $650 average invoice, each job leaves $292.50, so the shop needs 86 jobs a month, about 4.1 a day over 21 working days. Adding a $5,000 profit goal raises the target to $66,666.67, or 103 jobs.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between overhead and job costs?
Job costs rise and fall with the work: the crew's hours on a job, materials, subs, permits. Overhead is there whether you work or not: rent, truck payments, insurance, software, office staff. Break-even uses overhead; gross margin already accounts for job costs.
Where do I find my gross margin?
Take last year's sales, subtract direct job costs (field labor, materials, subcontractors, job permits), and divide what is left by sales. Your accountant's profit and loss statement usually shows it as gross profit. The job profit calculator shows it for a single job.
Why include owner pay?
If the business only breaks even before paying you, you are working for free. Counting your pay as a fixed cost shows what the business has to bring in to be worth running.
Why is the number of jobs rounded up?
You cannot do part of a job. If the math says 85.5 jobs, the 86th is the one that gets you over the line.
WHEN THE JOB MOVES FORWARD
Keep your customers, work, and follow-up together.
Explore how CrewBrix connects the next steps. Your free-tool draft stays in your browser; it is not automatically imported into an account.