Custom Order Quote Floor Calculator
When you ask how much should I charge for a custom order, or you need a custom cookie pricing calculator to find the minimum price for a job with materials and labor, calculate your floor before you promise a number. This tool adds your materials, material-only waste, fixed costs, travel, overhead, and target hourly pay, then divides that sum by one minus the card processing fee rate (cost ÷ (1 − fee rate)), rounding half away from zero to the nearest cent. Once you know your floor, head to /tools/en/client-quote-cost-split/ to build a client-visible quote that keeps your internal costs hidden.
Run the numbers for one job
What This Tool Does
- Material-Only Waste and Fee Gross-Up: Waste applies strictly to your material cost (round(materials × loss rate)), and the card processing fee sits in the denominator (cost ÷ (1 − fee rate)) so card fees do not eat into your target pay.
- Three-State Candidate Price Check: Compare a candidate quote against your floor using strict less-than rules to see whether your price is below the floor, equal to the floor, or above the floor.
- Separate Profit and Actual Hourly Metrics: View your estimated net revenue, profit after fees and costs, and actual hourly pay based on unrounded net proceeds divided by your entered labor hours.
How to Use It
- Enter job costs and rates: Fill in your material cost, material waste percentage, fixed cost, travel, overhead, labor hours, target hourly rate, and processing fee rate (between 0% and under 100%).
- Review your minimum quote floor: Check the computed floor in USD cents, which excludes sales tax and rounds half away from zero to the cent.
- Test a candidate quote (optional): Enter a proposed price to compare it against the floor and check your shortfall or surplus, estimated profit, and actual hourly rate, then use /tools/en/client-quote-cost-split/ to format your client text.
Worked Example
In a custom cookie order (T008-01) with $22.80 in materials, a 10% waste rate adds $2.28 in material-only waste. Adding $0.00 fixed and travel costs, $4.00 in overhead, and 5.5 labor hours at $25.00 per hour ($137.50) brings pre-fee costs to $166.58. With a 3% processing fee in the denominator ($166.58 ÷ 0.97), the minimum quote floor rounds half away from zero to $171.73. If you test a candidate price of $150.00 (T008-02), the quote is below the floor with a shortfall of $21.73, net revenue of $145.50, an estimated loss of -$21.08, and an actual hourly rate of $21.17 per hour. If you test a candidate price of $180.00 (T008-03), the quote is $8.27 above the floor ($180.00 − $171.73), while your actual profit after the 3% fee ($174.60 net revenue minus $166.58 cost) is $8.02 and your actual hourly rate is $26.46 per hour—showing why the $8.27 difference above the floor is not your profit.
Limitations & Exceptions
- All outputs are arithmetic estimates based solely on the numbers you type; actual job hours, material usage, and final proceeds can differ from your entries.
- Leaving a required field blank, entering negative numbers, entering 0 or less for labor hours when using a labor line, or setting the fee rate to 100% or higher is invalid and produces no dollar output rather than displaying $0.00.
- Sales tax is excluded from the floor calculation; to display exclusive sales tax on a customer quote without changing your floor, use /tools/en/client-quote-cost-split/.
- Calculations apply to a single USD job using half-away-from-zero rounding to the cent (0.5 cent rounds to 1 cent) and do not constitute tax, accounting, invoicing, or legal minimum-wage advice.
- Never enter client legal names, street addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses into this tool; any job inputs stay out of the page URL.
Frequently Asked Questions
What costs are included in the quote floor, and why is sales tax left out?
The floor sums your materials, material-only waste (round(materials × loss rate)), fixed costs, travel, overhead, and labor (hours × target hourly rate), then divides that total by 1 − fee rate. Sales tax is excluded because it is collected from the client on top of your selling price; you can add an exclusive tax display on /tools/en/client-quote-cost-split/ without altering your floor.
Why is the amount above the floor different from my estimated profit?
The quote floor is rounded to a whole cent after dividing by 1 − fee rate, and your processing fee is deducted from the total candidate price you charge. In test case T008-03, a $180.00 quote sits $8.27 above the $171.73 floor, but after taking the 3% fee off the extra dollars ($174.60 net revenue minus $166.58 total cost), your estimated profit is $8.02.
When does the calculator withhold dollar amounts instead of showing a result?
The tool refuses to output a floor if a required cost or rate is left blank, if any money or rate input is negative, if the processing fee rate reaches or exceeds 100%, or if you type 0 or a negative number for labor hours. If your job has no labor, leave labor_hours blank so the tool computes a non-labor floor and withholds the hourly pay metric.
Does this calculator file taxes, send invoices, or guarantee my hourly rate?
No. This page performs arithmetic on the figures you enter for a single USD job. It is not tax preparation, bookkeeping, invoicing, or payroll compliance, and it cannot guarantee that a client will accept your quote, that you will earn a profit, or that your job will take the exact hours you entered.