Build a full quote from the ground up, materials and markup, labour, travel, overhead, profit and GST, then see your true margin and effective hourly rate before you ever send it.
Takes ~3 minutes · All figures stay in your browser until you choose to share them
Materials & Markup
Line items with waste & handling
Labour & Travel
Charge-out rate plus 88c/km
Overhead & Profit
Keep the business funded
Margin & GST
A quote you can stand behind
For most Australian trades businesses, quoting is where the money is quietly won or lost. It's easy to price the parts and an hourly labour figure, then send a number that feels about right — only to find, weeks later, that travel wasn't counted, overheads weren't recovered, and the job barely broke even. The Tradie Job Quoting Calculator is a free, plain-English tool that helps you build a quote from the ground up: materials with markup, labour, travel, overhead allocation, profit and GST, all in one place. Its real job is to show you the true margin and effective hourly rate behind a quote before you send it, so a busy-looking job doesn't turn out to be an expensive one.
You enter your trade and job type, then list your materials line by line with a quantity, unit cost and a markup percentage that covers supply, waste, storage and handling. You add your estimated labour hours and charge-out rate, travel details (one-way distance, number of trips and a per-kilometre vehicle rate), and your overhead-allocation and profit-margin percentages. From those inputs the calculator layers cost on cost the way a proper quote should: materials plus markup, labour, travel, then overhead applied on top, then your profit margin, and finally GST at the current statutory rate — using your own figures and the current ATO cents-per-kilometre rate as the vehicle default rather than baked-in assumptions. It then works backwards to two numbers that matter most: your profit margin on the job, and your effective hourly rate once travel time is counted. If that effective rate looks thin, or if an emergency job is under-priced, labour is an unusually small share of the quote, or the job runs long, it flags exactly where the quote deserves a second look. Everything stays in your browser until you choose to unlock the full breakdown.
Owner-operators and small trades businesses — plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, tilers, roofers, landscapers and general builders — who want to quote with confidence and stop under-pricing work.
The short answers are here. For anything else, ask below or get in touch.
They do different jobs. Overhead recovers the fixed cost of simply running the business — rent, insurance, admin, accounting, tools and the quiet weeks — spread across your jobs so each one carries its share. Profit is what's left after every cost is covered; it funds growth, equipment, emergencies and your own income during downtime. If you fold them together, or leave profit out, you can win the job and still go backwards. The calculator applies overhead on top of your direct costs, then your profit margin on top of that, so both are visible and neither gets quietly absorbed.
These tools work together to give you a clearer picture of your business.
Use these results to make better decisions. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on them, an advisor can walk through what they mean for the business.
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