RHACOVA

Free contractor tool

Job Profit Calculator

A $24,000 job is not $24,000 of anything you get to keep. Enter the price and the cost, add approved change orders, and see the profit, the margin and the markup that job actually produced.

The job

Example figures are loaded so the math is visible. Change orders are optional — leave them at 0 if there were none.

Material, loaded labor, equipment, subs, disposal, permits, delivery.

Approved change orders

Only work the customer approved. Extra work you absorbed has a cost but no revenue — enter the cost and leave the revenue at 0.

Your result

Profit$7,100.00
Profit marginProfit ÷ revenue27.10%
Markup on costProfit ÷ cost37.17%

Revenue and cost

Contract price$24,000.00
Change-order revenue$2,200.00
Total revenueRevenue is money coming in, not profit$26,200.00
Job cost$17,500.00
Change-order cost$1,600.00
Total cost$19,100.00
Why this number?

profit = sellingPrice - cost; margin = profit / sellingPrice

Inputs

Job cost
$19,100.00
Selling price
$26,200.00

Results

Selling price
$26,200.00
Profit
$7,100.00
Margin
27.10%
Markup
37.17%

Formula pricing.profitAndMarginFromPrice · engine shared.pricing@1.0.0 · core-margin-markup · rounding half-even to 2 decimals.

Price the next one on purpose

Build your next job as an estimate and RHACOVA carries cost, price and profit through every line before you send it. These calculator numbers aren't copied over — the estimate starts from the job's own costs.

Build an estimate

Revenue is not profit

Revenue is what the customer pays. Cost is what the work consumed. Profit is what is left, and it is the only one of the three that belongs to you. Contractors describing a “$24,000 job” are naming revenue — the profit inside it might be $6,500, or it might be negative.

Markup and margin measure differently

The same dollar of profit can be described two ways, and they never produce the same percentage:

  • Margin = profit ÷ revenue — the share of the customer's money you keep
  • Markup = profit ÷ cost — how much you added on top of what you spent

Adding 25% markup to cost gives a 20% margin. Adding 50% gives 33.3%. Quoting a “25% job” without saying which one is how estimates end up short.

How change orders are handled

Approved change-order revenue is added to the contract price and its cost is added to the job cost, then profit and margin are recalculated on both totals. Nothing is prorated and nothing is assumed: extra work you never billed for shows up as cost with no matching revenue, which is exactly what it did to your profit.

  • Revenue = contract price + approved change-order revenue
  • Cost = job cost + change-order cost
  • Profit = revenue − cost

Worked example

A $24000 contract that cost $17500 to build, plus a change order worth $2200 that cost $1600 to deliver:

  • Before the change order: $6,500.00 profit, 27.08% margin
  • After it: $7,100.00 profit, 27.10% margin, 37.17% markup on cost

The change order added revenue and profit, and still pulled the margin down — because it was sold at a thinner rate than the base contract.

Common mistakes

  • Calling the contract price the profit. It is revenue, and most of it already belongs to someone else.
  • Reading a markup percentage as a margin. 25% markup is 20% margin — a fifth less than you thought.
  • Leaving your own field hours out of the cost. Unpaid owner labor makes a losing job look profitable.
  • Doing change-order work without a change order. The cost lands on your side either way.
  • Judging a job on dollars alone. A $6,500 profit on a two-week job and on a two-month job are not the same result.

Related decisions

Learn the method