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Business calculator

Break-even calculator

Find out when your setup could pay for itself. Include job costs, monthly bills, and pay for your work.

Example forecast30 jobs to repay setup
View result

Example assumptions. Replace these values with your own costs, pay target, and expected bookings.

Your costs and expected jobs

Complete every field
One-time gear and launch costs you want the business to repay. Enter 0 if there is nothing to recover.
Insurance, software, phone, ads, storage, and other fixed monthly costs.
Must be above 0.
Fuel, tolls, parking, or a simple route allowance.
Enter 0 to 100.
Must be above 0.
Cash set aside for your own work before repaying equipment. Enter 0 only to model no owner pay. This is not a tax calculation.

Example forecast

Your inputs suggest about 30 jobs to repay the setup.

Recovery uses only the cash left after overhead and your owner pay reserve. That takes about 2.3 months, or about 9.8 weeks, at the volume you entered.

Cash available to repay your setup
$400 per month available. Setup recovery at about 2.3 months.Setup $900NowMonth 3

$400 per month after bills and your pay, before tax. Assumes the same booking rate each month.

View the cost breakdown
Left after job costs$145Price minus materials, travel, and card fee
Monthly cash before owner pay$1,700Money left after job costs and monthly bills
Monthly pay set aside for you$1,300Your entered pay per job × monthly jobs
Monthly cash to repay your setup$400After overhead and your entered owner pay, before tax
Jobs per month to cover overhead2About 0.3 jobs per week
Jobs to recover startup30About 9.8 weeks after overhead and owner pay
Left per hour after job costs$36Pays your own labor and the overhead. It is not a wage.
Left per worked hour after overhead$33Your pay and profit per hour, before startup recovery and tax

Startup recovery uses only the cash left after overhead and your entered owner pay reserve. Tax, loan payments, and any omitted costs reduce that cash further. Include messages, setup, teardown, laundry, maintenance, and travel in your hours. Adjust booking volume for weather and cancellations.

Use these costs to price a service

Pay yourself before you count equipment recovery

Start with what customers pay. Subtract materials, travel, and card fees. Then cover monthly bills and set aside your pay. Only the money left can repay your setup.

A worked example

A $180 job with $30 of direct costs and a 3% payment fee leaves $144.60 per job. At three jobs per week, this model uses 13 jobs per month. After $180 of monthly overhead and $100 of owner pay per job, $399.80 remains before tax. A $900 setup would take about 2.3 months to recover with these example inputs.

Enter your full startup costs, realistic booking volume, and all working hours. This is a cash planning model. It does not calculate income tax, financing costs, or accounting profit. To see monthly and yearly income from the same workload, use the income projector.