Job Profitability Predictor
Know your real profit before day one. This tool accounts for what your estimate misses: burdened labor, overhead, and material waste.
Job Estimate Details
Typical: tile/flooring 12%, framing 8%, drywall 10%
Use our Labor Burden Calculator for your exact rate
Monthly overhead ÷ number of jobs running this month
Predicted Profit
Track this in real time on the job.
Track Every Job in RemodelFin →Why Job Profit Is Never What Your Estimate Says It Will Be
You estimated 35% gross margin. You ended up with 11%. It happens on every third job for most remodeling contractors. The gap isn't random — it's caused by three predictable factors that don't appear in a basic materials + labor estimate.
Factor 1: Labor underestimated by 25–40%. The estimate uses a base wage. The paycheck uses a burdened rate. Every hour of work costs 25–40% more than your estimate said — before anything goes wrong on the job.
Factor 2: Material waste not accounted for. Tile work runs 12–15% waste. Framing runs 8–10%. If you bid 1,000 square feet of tile and buy 1,000 square feet of tile, you're buying the overage out of your margin.
Factor 3: Overhead not fully recovered. Your monthly overhead — truck, insurance, software, estimating time — is a fixed cost that must be recovered through your jobs. If 3 jobs are running in a month and overhead is $9,000, each job needs to carry $3,000 of overhead in the bid.
This calculator shows your profit after all three adjustments — so the number you see is what you'll actually take home, not the number that felt good when the estimate went out.