Add direct job costs and allocated overhead, then divide by the share of revenue left after processing fees and your target margin. Adding a margin percentage to cost will not produce that margin.
Worked examples use illustrative USD inputs, not national averages or recommended market rates. Service prices exclude applicable sales tax.
Put each input in the right place
Total cost is labor, chemicals, equipment allocation, travel and other direct costs, plus allocated overhead. Count owner labor too. Keep percentage payment processing out of this cost total because the fee depends on the selling price.
Processing fee and target margin are decimal shares of revenue: use 0.03 for 3% and 0.30 for 30%. For flat per-payment charges, include the total expected fees for the deposit and balance payments in job costs, counting each charge once.
The equation starts with revenue minus processing minus costs equals profit. If profit is a target fraction of revenue, revenue × (1 − fee − margin) must cover total cost. The denominator must be positive. A fee and margin totaling 100% or more cannot produce a valid quote.
Worked example: $315 in complete job costs
Assume $240 in direct expenses and $75 in overhead. With 3% processing and a 30% target margin:
The processing fee is about $14.10. Subtract the $315 cost and that fee from the selling price to leave about $141.05 in profit. The resulting margin is 30.0%, subject to display rounding. Profit here is after the entered costs and processing, before income tax and anything you did not allocate.
A 30% margin is not a 30% markup
Adding 30% to the same $315 cost gives $409.50. After the 3% processing fee, profit is about $82, or 20.1% of revenue. The mistake is the denominator: markup starts from cost; margin starts from the customer’s payment.
For an existing selling price, use actual margin = (price − total cost − price × processing rate) ÷ price. The profit margin calculator can check the price someone has already offered.
The formula is the base, then the quote needs a floor
If the example business sets a $500 minimum, the final quote starts at $500 even though the margin formula produces $470.15. The primary calculator adds urgency first, applies a discount afterward and then protects the minimum. A discount can reduce the actual margin even when the quote stays above the floor.
Do not use the formula to hide scope uncertainty. Heavy stains, awkward access or delicate material should change your estimate of time or resources when appropriate. The scope selections themselves do not apply hidden multipliers.
See the exact calculator definitions and rounding rules, or choose how to express the resulting quote as a rate.
To apply the formula from inspection through customer scope, follow the worked job-pricing decision.