How do I calculate whether I actually made money on a job?

Subtract your total job cost from what you invoiced (ex-GST). Total job cost is materials, plus loaded labour (your hours multiplied by your true hourly cost, including super at 12% of ordinary time earnings), workers compensation, and a share of fixed overheads, plus subcontractor invoices, plus travel. A positive result means you made money. Zero or negative means the quote needs to change.

Updated 30/10/2026

Why does the gut feel get it wrong?

Most tradies judge a job by the invoice total. An invoice of $4,000 (illustrative) after $1,500 in materials (illustrative) feels like $2,500 in the pocket (illustrative). It is not. Your hours have a cost, your ute has a cost, your insurance has a cost, and if you do not subtract them from every job, you are guessing your margin instead of measuring it. For a broader look at why the gap exists, see our guide to knowing if you are actually making money.

The calculation below takes under five minutes per job. Run it on your last three completed jobs and the pattern will show itself.

What goes into the total cost of a single job?

Five cost lines, no more. Every dollar you spent or committed on that job sits in one of these buckets:

• Materials. Every supplier invoice, delivery charge and consumable (blades, silicone, tape, gas) against this job, at what you actually paid (ex-GST)
• Loaded labour. Your hours (and any employee hours) multiplied by the loaded hourly cost, not the charge-out rate (see the next section)
• Subcontractors. Every subbie invoice against this job, at face value
• Travel. Round-trip kilometres multiplied by a per-km cost. The ATO publishes a cents-per-kilometre rate each year as a deduction benchmark (check ato.gov.au for the current figure). Your actual vehicle cost may differ, but the ATO rate is a reasonable starting proxy
• Overhead recovery. A per-hour share of your annual fixed costs (insurance, vehicle fixed costs, phone, software, accounting, licence fees, training). This is the line most tradies leave out entirely

Add all five. Subtract the total from your invoice (ex-GST). The remainder is your job profit. If you want to set up a repeatable system rather than calculating one job at a time, see our guide to setting up job costing.

How do I calculate my loaded hourly cost?

Your loaded hourly cost is what each hour of your time actually costs the business before any profit. It is always higher than your base wage because it carries compulsory on-costs and a share of your overheads.

Start with your base hourly wage (what you draw or would draw as a wage). Add:

• Superannuation. 12% of ordinary time earnings¹. From 1 July 2026, employers must pay super at the same time as salary and wages², which changes the cash flow timing if you employ staff
• Workers compensation insurance. Premiums vary by trade and state. A plumber in NSW might pay around 3% to 4% of wages (directional, state-dependent); a roofer or concreter pays more
• Leave loading. If you are a sole trader you do not get paid leave, but you still take holidays. Budget four to six weeks of non-billable time a year and spread that cost across the hours you do bill
• Fixed overhead per hour. Total your annual fixed costs (see the FAQ for what to include) and divide by your realistic billable hours for the year, typically 1,200 to 1,600 hours for a sole operator

What does the calculation look like on a real job?

Here is a worked example for a sole-operator plumber replacing a hot water system in suburban Melbourne. Every figure is an assumption for illustration.

That 31% margin (illustrative) is the real margin after every cost is accounted for. If the plumber had only subtracted materials ($1,636 minus $850 = $786, illustrative), they would have believed the margin was 48% (illustrative), overstating it by 17 percentage points (illustrative). Over a year of jobs, that gap compounds into thousands of dollars of missing cash.

If any of the material costs were missed in the quote, the margin shrinks further. For the common culprits, see our guide to materials you forgot to charge for.

What are the warning signs that a job lost money?

Run the five-line calculation and watch for these patterns:

• Actual hours exceeded quoted hours by a wide margin. The labour line blew out and the profit went with it. Track actual hours against quoted hours for a month and you will see which job types consistently overrun
• Travel was a large share of a small job. Travel is a fixed cost that eats into smaller jobs disproportionately. Two small jobs across town can be less profitable than one mid-range job around the corner
• Materials cost rose after the quote. Price increases between quote and purchase, or extras you absorbed without a variation, reduce the margin silently. Always re-check supplier pricing before starting if the quote is more than two weeks old
• The margin is positive but thin. A thin margin on a standard residential job leaves almost no buffer for a callback, a slow-paying customer, or a day lost to rain. For how to price callbacks into your quotes from the start, see our callback and warranty pricing guide

As the Australian Government notes, good record keeping helps you to monitor how your business is performing so you can make informed decisions³. The Australian Taxation Office requires that "You need to keep records that accurately record and explain all transactions and other acts you engage in that are relevant to your tax and super affairs." Keeping per-job cost records satisfies that obligation and gives you the data to quote better next time.

How do I make this automatic instead of manual?

Most job management apps can generate a per-job profit report once you enter time and materials against each job. ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus and simPRO all have a job costing or profitability view. The manual version (a notebook or a spreadsheet row per job) works for a sole operator doing five to ten jobs a week, but it stops scaling once you have a crew.

The critical input is your loaded hourly cost. Set it once in your system, update it at the start of each financial year when insurance renewals, super rate changes and vehicle costs are known, and the per-job profit number updates itself every time you close a job.

If you want someone to audit your margins and show you where the leaks are, our free 15-minute discovery call is a practical place to start. We look at your quoting, your job costing, your overheads, and your charge-out rate, and show you the gaps in plain numbers. For the formula behind your charge-out rate specifically, see our guide to calculating what to charge per hour.