Charge-out rate / Australian trade businesses
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.
| 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 | — |
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rate is cost ÷ (1 − margin). Adding a percentage to cost is markup, and it always leaves you less than the number suggests.
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.
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.
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.