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Repair Shop Profit Calculator2026-07-26T10:35:40+00:00

Repair Shop Profit Calculator

Most repair shops price a job on parts plus labour and assume the difference is profit. It is not — rent, power, software and admin salaries have to come out of that same job. This calculator allocates your real monthly overhead across your real job volume, so the number it gives you is what you actually keep. Change any field and the result updates instantly.

Popular repair jobs: calculate the profit margin on iPhone and Samsung screen replacement, battery replacement, laptop screen and motherboard repair, charging port repair, water damage repair, data recovery, AC service and gas refill, brake service, watch battery replacement, ring resizing — or your own numbers.

True profit per job

Parts cost
Labour cost
Overhead allocated to this job
Total cost to deliver
Break-even price
Parts markup / margin
Labour earned per bench hour
Enter your numbers to see the result.

The maths runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere; the page address encodes your inputs so you can bookmark or share a result. Overhead is allocated evenly per job, which is the standard simplification; a job that ties up the bench for three days really costs more than this shows.

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Free tool by BytePhase — bytephase.com/tools

What this calculator is doing

Three costs come off the invoice, in this order:

Parts. What you paid your supplier. We ask separately what the customer paid for those parts, because the difference is parts markup and it does not belong to your bench — mixing the two is what makes a labour rate look healthier than it is.

Technician time. Bench hours multiplied by what an hour of that technician costs you. Use salary divided by hours actually worked, which is always higher than salary divided by hours the shop is open.

Overhead. Your total monthly fixed cost divided by the jobs you complete in a month. This is the number shops leave out, and it is the reason a “40% margin” job can be a 12% margin job.

What is left is your true profit. The break-even price below the result is the figure to remember: charge less than that and the job costs you money to accept.

The three numbers people get wrong

  • Technician hours. Use bench time, not calendar time. A job that sits three days but takes 90 minutes of work is a 1.5-hour job for costing — but it is a three-day job for capacity, which is a different problem.
  • Jobs per month. Completed and invoiced, not tickets opened. Overspecify this and every job looks more profitable than it is.
  • Overhead. Include everything that bills whether or not a customer walks in — rent, electricity, internet, software subscriptions, accountant, insurance, admin salaries.

Once the per-job maths is right, the follow-up question is whether your labour rate holds up at all. The repair pricing sanity check answers that one.

Repair Shop Profit Calculator – FAQs

How do you calculate profit on a repair job?2026-07-26T10:34:07+00:00

Take what you charged the customer and subtract three things, not two: the parts cost, the technician time (hours on the bench multiplied by what that hour costs you), and a share of your monthly overhead. Most shops stop after parts and labour, which is why a job that looks 40% profitable is often closer to 15%. Overhead — rent, electricity, software, admin salaries, insurance — is real money that has to come out of jobs, so divide your monthly overhead by the number of jobs you complete in a month and charge that to every ticket.

What is a good profit margin for a repair shop?2026-07-26T10:34:07+00:00

There is no single correct number, and any tool that gives you one without knowing your market is guessing. What matters is the shape: under 10% net margin after overhead leaves nothing for a warranty return, a dead part, or a slow month, so a shop running there is fragile even when it looks busy. Between 10% and 25% is workable. Above 25% net you have room to absorb a bad month. Judge your margin against your own break-even and your own costs, not against a figure from someone else’s market.

Should I include overhead when pricing a repair?2026-07-26T10:34:07+00:00

Yes — this is the single most common pricing mistake in repair. A job priced on parts plus labour only appears profitable while the shop is full. The moment volume drops, overhead does not drop with it, and jobs that looked fine start losing money. Allocating overhead per job tells you your true break-even price: the number below which you should not accept the work at all.

Why is my repair shop busy but not profitable?2026-07-26T10:34:07+00:00

Usually one of three things. Your effective hourly rate is below your cost per bench hour, so more volume simply loses money faster. Parts markup is too thin to cover the handling, warranty risk and dead stock that come with stocking parts. Or re-dos and warranty returns are consuming paid hours that never get invoiced — a 10% re-do rate silently removes 10% of your capacity. The calculator on this page separates the first two; the pricing sanity check covers the third.

What is the difference between markup and margin?2026-07-26T10:34:07+00:00

Markup is measured against your cost; margin is measured against your selling price. A part that costs 1,000 and sells for 1,500 carries a 50% markup but only a 33% margin. Confusing the two is how shops end up with less money than they planned for — you set what feels like a 40% margin, but you actually applied a 40% markup and kept 29%. This calculator reports both so the gap is visible.

Know this for every job, not just this one

BytePhase records parts, technician and time against every repair ticket as the work happens, then reports margin per job, per technician and per repair type without a spreadsheet. Free 15-day trial, no card required.

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