Enter what you charged and what the job cost, including your own days on the tools, and see what it actually made you. The profit per day is the number that tells you whether the work was worth taking.
Change "your cost per day" and watch the profit move. Leaving your own time out is what turns a loss into a phantom profit.
Worklot tracks price against cost on each job as you go, so you see the margin while there's still time to do something about it. Built for small trade and engineering firms.
A £4,000 job sounds healthy until you take out the materials, the days it ate and the bits that always get forgotten: the hire, the skip, the subbie you brought in for a day, the fuel running back and forth. What's left is the profit, and it's usually a lot less than the invoice made it feel.
The single biggest reason trades think a job did well when it didn't is not costing their own time. If you're on the tools for five days and you don't put a value on those days, the profit figure is counting your labour as free. It isn't. Your time has a cost whether you're the owner or not, and once you put a fair day rate on it, the real picture appears.
Two jobs, same profit, very different value. One makes £1,250 over five days, that's £250 a day. Another makes £1,250 over ten, that's £125 a day, half as good for your time. When you're deciding what work to chase, profit per day tells you which jobs actually pay and which just keep you busy.
It's the gross profit on the job: price minus the direct costs of doing it. It does not take off a share of your fixed overheads (office, insurance, accountant) or your tax. Build those into your day rate so the day-cost figure already carries them, and the profit here is much closer to what really lands.
No. Use the price before VAT and costs before VAT. VAT you charge is the customer's tax that you pass to HMRC, and VAT you pay on materials you usually reclaim if you're registered, so leaving it out on both sides keeps the profit honest.
Put in the days it actually took, not the days you quoted. That's the point of doing this after the job as well as before: if it took eight days instead of five, the profit per day drops, and that's the lesson to price in next time.
Yes. It's the only way to know if the work pays. If a job only breaks even once your time is costed, it isn't making money, it's buying you a wage you could have earned on better work. Cost your time and let the profit be genuinely profit.
A free tool for general guidance, not financial advice. Gross profit here excludes fixed overheads and tax unless you've built them into your day-cost figure. Check important numbers with your accountant.
Quotes, jobs, invoices and getting paid, in one place. Your data, your keys, no lock-in.