Sign shop hourly rate calculator

What an hour of shop time has to bill at to pay for the building, the wages and you. No sign-up, and nothing you type leaves this page.

How it works

Add up everything the shop has to pay in a month: overhead, wages with payroll taxes, and your own pay. Divide by the hours you can actually bill. Then divide by one minus your profit percent, so the profit is a share of what you charge and not an afterthought.

With the numbers already filled in, that's $26,000 a month over 325 billable hours, which is $80 an hour to break even, and $94.12 with 15% profit on top.

The number most shops get wrong

Billable hours. Nobody bills 40 hours a week. Setup, cleanup, remakes, phone calls and driving to look at a job all take time nobody pays for directly. Pull a month of real jobs and count the hours you charged for. If you're not sure, 25 hours a person is a safer starting guess than 40.

Use a wage as your labor rate and a job can look profitable on paper while losing money once the rent is paid.

Once you have your rate

Put it in your price book so every quote uses it, whoever writes the quote. Here's how it fits into pricing a sign, or try it on a job.

Tired of doing this in a spreadsheet?

SignQuote keeps your rate and your material costs in one price book for your whole shop, so everyone quotes the same number. It's $49 a month however many people you have, and I'll load your prices for you.