Labor & staffing

Charge-out rate calculator

Calculate a customer billing rate from employee wage, payroll burden, allocated overhead, billable utilization, and target margin.

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01

YOUR NUMBERS

What should you charge for an employee's billable hour?

02

YOUR RESULT

Recommended charge-out rate

$56
Loaded wage per hour$29.5
Overhead per billable hour$12.5
True cost per billable hour$42
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The customer rate must recover both loaded labor and $13 of overhead for each billable hour.

BUSINESS PRICING EXAMPLES

Turn an employee's true hourly cost into a customer billing rate

A sustainable charge-out rate has to recover more than the wage. Payroll burden, overhead, and nonbillable time all increase the cost carried by each billable hour.

Employee billing rate with overhead and 25% margin

An employee earns $25 per hour, payroll burden is 18%, annual allocated overhead is $18,000, and the employee bills 30 hours per week for 48 weeks.

Enter these numbers in the calculator above

Employee hourly wage
$25
Payroll burden
18 %
Annual overhead allocated to employee
$18,000
Billable hours per week
30 hrs
Working weeks per year
48 weeks
Target margin
25 %

Recommended charge-out rate$56.00

The calculator first loads payroll cost, spreads annual overhead across billable capacity, then prices the resulting true hourly cost to the selected margin.

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