Paid Excel worksheet
Plumbing Hourly Rate Calculator
Find the hourly rate your shop needs.
Built for small plumbing contractors. Enter wages, overhead, realistic billable hours, and your target profit margin to work out your billable rate. It is a $49 Excel download, not a free browser calculator.
PlumbRate Hourly Rate Calculator
$49
One-time purchase. No subscription.
Enter your shop numbers in one editable Excel worksheet to see billable hours, break-even rate, overhead per hour, and the billing rate for your target profit margin.
Checking availability…
- • Wages and labor burden
- • Paid and unpaid time off, plus non-billable time
- • 42 annual overhead lines
- • Break-even rate and target billing rate
- • Desktop Excel recommended
Pay the full $49 and get a one-time $49 credit toward ProPlus, making it $550 before tax instead of $599.
Calculator details and ProPlus credit terms
The worksheet includes separate inputs for paid holidays, paid PTO or sick days, unpaid days off, drive time, other non-billable hours, labor burden, and 42 annual overhead lines. Blue input cells start at 0. Formula cells are protected without a password, and there are no macros. Desktop Excel is recommended. Editing on a phone or tablet is limited. The purchase includes one business license and help by email.
The credit is tied to the email used to pay and applies only to ProPlus when you are signed in to My Books. It does not expire, has no cash value, and cannot be combined with another discount. One credit is available per purchaser. Discounted or free calculator copies and purchases made before the calculator went on sale do not earn a credit.
Standard and Pro owners manually enter the resulting hourly rate in their workbook Settings. ProPlus includes its own integrated calculator plus the standalone calculator download. The files do not link to each other.
The detailed method
How to calculate your plumbing hourly rate
The method in two lines
Break-even rate = (annual loaded field labor + assigned field tools + annual overhead) ÷ company billable hours
Billing rate = break-even rate ÷ (1 − target profit margin)
Wage, break-even rate and billing rate are not the same number
- Wage is what you pay a tech per paid hour. It is a cost, not a price.
- Break-even rate is what each billable hour has to bring in to cover loaded labor, tools and overhead with nothing left over.
- Billing rate is the break-even rate priced for the profit margin you want. This is the number that goes into your price book.
1. Count billable hours, not scheduled hours
Start with scheduled hours per tech (hours per day × days per week × weeks per year). Subtract paid holidays, PTO and sick days, unpaid days off, drive time, and other time that cannot be billed, like shop time, meetings and callbacks. Unpaid days off come out of both sides: the tech is not paid for them, and they cannot be billed either, so they lower both paid hours and billable hours. Count each day once. If you already dropped weeks from the year to cover unpaid time, do not subtract those days again. Multiply what is left by the number of billable field techs. That is your company billable hours, and it is the number every cost gets divided by.
2. Add up annual loaded field labor and tools
Loaded wage is the hourly wage plus labor burden: payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits and training, as a percentage of wages. Techs are paid for their scheduled hours minus unpaid days off. Paid leave like holidays and PTO still counts as paid time. So annual loaded labor is loaded wage × paid hours × techs, where paid hours are scheduled hours minus unpaid days off. The worked example below assumes no unpaid days, so its paid hours equal its scheduled hours. Add the hand and power tools assigned to each tech for the year. Leave owner pay for office and management time out of this line; it belongs in overhead.
3. Total your annual overhead once
Overhead is everything else it costs to keep the doors open: rent, insurance, office pay, the non-billable part of owner pay, fuel and truck maintenance, software and phones, marketing, licenses and dues, shared shop equipment, accounting and legal. Count each cost once. If your burden already includes workers comp, do not count it again under insurance.
Truck and equipment loan or lease payments can go in as cash costs, because the rate has to produce the cash to make them. That makes this a cash budget, not an accounting profit and loss: the profit it shows is not the same as net income on your tax return. Talk with your accountant about how your books treat those payments.
Print the free annual expense checklist to gather these numbers before you start.
4. Price for margin, not markup
A 25% margin means 25% of the billing rate is profit. Dividing the break-even rate by (1 − 0.25) gets you there. Multiplying by 1.25 does not: that is a 25% markup, which only works out to a 20% margin.
Illustrative worked example, not a recommended market rate
Example figures only, chosen to show the math. They are not a recommended rate. Use your own numbers.
1 tech, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks. 7 paid holidays and 12 PTO days, 1.25 hours of drive time a day, 3 other non-billable hours a week. $35/hr wage, 25% burden, $2,500 in assigned tools per tech, $80,000 annual overhead, 20% profit margin.
| Scheduled hours per tech | 2,080 |
| Less holidays, PTO, drive and other time | − 633 |
| Billable hours per tech | 1,447 |
| Company billable hours | 1,447 |
| Loaded wage per paid hour | $43.75 |
| Annual loaded field labor | $91,000 |
| Assigned field tools | $2,500 |
| Annual overhead | $80,000 |
| Total annual cost | $173,500 |
| Break-even rate | $119.90/hr |
| Billing rate at 20% margin | $149.88/hr |
| Profit per billable hour | $29.98 |
The $35 wage turns into a $119.90 break-even rate once unbilled hours, burden, tools and overhead are counted. This example assumes no unpaid days off. The calculator workbook has input cells prefilled with zero and does not contain these example figures. You can enter this example's numbers yourself to follow along. Rounded, this example would bill about $150 an hour.
Mistakes that sink a rate
- Dividing costs by scheduled hours instead of billable hours.
- Counting the same cost twice, such as workers comp in both burden and insurance.
- Leaving out the owner's office and management time.
- Using markup where you meant margin.
- Setting the rate once and never checking it when wages or overhead change.
Plumbing hourly rate questions
How much should I charge per hour as a plumber?
There is no universal rate. Start with your shop's loaded field labor, assigned tools, and overhead. Divide those costs by realistic billable hours, then price the break-even rate for your target margin. Use a billable man-hour basis, so a one-person rate is not confused with a crew rate or a whole-job estimate.
What is the difference between a plumber's wage and billing rate?
Wage is what the plumber earns per paid hour. The billing rate also has to recover labor burden, paid non-billable time, tools, overhead, and the shop's target profit across the hours that can actually be billed.
What expenses should my plumbing hourly rate cover?
Include loaded field labor, assigned field tools, and annual overhead such as rent, insurance, office pay, trucks, software, and accounting. Put owner field pay in labor and non-billable owner pay in overhead. If materials are marked up separately, leave them out of the hourly-rate costs so they are not counted twice.
Can I use this hourly rate with flat-rate pricing?
Yes. Standard and Pro owners enter the result manually in workbook Settings, then review labor times, material costs, and every final price. ProPlus has its own integrated calculator. The standalone file does not link to the price books.
Is this a free online calculator?
No. The calculator is a paid $49 Excel workbook with no subscription. This page's guide and illustrative example are free to read. Desktop Excel is recommended for entering your shop numbers and reviewing the result.
Put your rate into a price book
Try the free Standard sample, enter your hourly rate manually, and review the starting labor times, material costs, and every final price before your techs use it.
Have a rate? See how to use it in how to price plumbing jobs, how it turns into flat-rate prices in the price book guide or compare the price books.