calculator

True Hourly Rate Calculator

Find the hourly and day rate that recovers a full year of costs and non-billable time.

What you get: Minimum true hourly rate, day rate and the cost of every unbilled hour.

Your figures

Live

Hours available per year1840.0 hrs
46 weeks × 5 days × 8 hours. Holiday, illness and quiet weeks are already excluded by the weeks figure.
Billable hours per year1196.0 hrs
65.0% of available hours. The other 644 hours — quoting, driving, merchants, paperwork — are real work that no customer pays for directly.
Revenue the business must produce£76,932.99
Take-home £42,000.00 grossed up for 27.0% tax and NI = £57,534.25, plus overheads of £13,700.00, plus a 8.0% buffer for the business itself.
Minimum true hourly rate£64.33
Revenue needed ÷ billable hours. This is a floor, not a selling price — profit on materials and job risk sit on top.
Equivalent day rate£514.60
Hourly rate × 8 hours. If you quote day rates, this is the minimum before travel and materials.
Cost of one unbilled hour£64.33
Every hour lost to a wasted quote visit or a supplier queue costs you this much in recoverable time.

How this is worked out

Take-home is grossed up by the tax and NI percentage you enter — it is an estimate, not a tax calculation.
Billable percentage should reflect reality: quoting, driving, merchant visits and invoicing are not billable.
The result is a floor. Profit on materials, job risk and market rates sit on top of it.

Results are planning aids based on figures you enter. They are not financial, tax or legal advice, and no price is guaranteed to be accepted.

Where this fits

Pricing & Quoting

Paperwork that goes with it

A quote structure that answers the questions customers ask before they say yes: what is included, what is not, when it happens, what it costs and how payment works.

Professional Trade Quote Template