Sixteen plain-talk calculators for owners in the trades — built by a business banker, written in shop language. No jargon, no sales pitch. Just the math the way an underwriter sees it.
Underwriters live on one ratio: DSCR — your cash flow divided by everything you owe each year. Most banks want 1.25× or better. That means for every $1.00 of loan payments, you need $1.25 of cash flow. Run yours before you ever sit down across the desk.
Use last year's tax return or year-to-date financials. Rough is fine — this is a first look, not an application.
Cash flow available to pay debt (per year)
What you owe (per year)
Cash flow ÷ total yearly debt payments
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Same machine, three very different price tags. Compare the total cost of each path — not just the monthly payment — and see how much cash each one leaves in your operating account the day you sign.
Start with the machine. Then set the terms you're being quoted for each option.
If you finance it
If you lease it
Your cash's other job
Total dollars out over the term, including tax, interest, fees, and buyout.
Cost isn't the whole story. Financing and leasing keep cash in the business for payroll and slow months; paying cash owns the machine free and clear with zero payments hanging over a bad quarter. Tax treatment differs too — that's a CPA conversation, and it's worth having before you sign.
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If the phone stopped ringing tomorrow, how many months could your cash carry payroll, rent, and the notes? That's your runway — and it's the number that decides whether a slow season is an inconvenience or an emergency.
Monthly figures. Use a normal month, not your best one.
Money out, per month
Stress-test it
In a downturn, job costs fall with the work — but payroll, rent, and payments don't. The stress test cuts revenue and job costs, and holds the rest flat.
In a normal month
The cushion target is three months of the bills you can't pause — payroll, rent, insurance, and debt payments. Job costs aren't in it, because when work stops, they mostly stop too.
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The check cleared — but did the job actually pay you? Add up everything the job really cost: materials, labor, equipment, and the odds and ends that never make it onto the invoice. What's left is your true profit, and the margin tells you whether you'd take the same job again.
One finished job. Use what it actually cost — not what you estimated when you bid it.
What the customer paid, minus every cost the job carried.
Margin is profit as a share of the price — it's the number that decides whether a job was worth the risk, the trucks, and the weekends. Busy is not the same as profitable.
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Most owners price a job by adding up the costs and tacking on a little. This works the other way: start with the profit margin you want to keep, and let the math set the price. Quote below the break-even number and you're paying to work.
Your best estimate of what the job will cost — then the margin you want left over when it's done.
Costs, plus the margin you chose — priced before you start, not hoped for after.
Margin is not markup. A 20% margin on a $26,250 quote leaves $5,250 — adding 20% on top of costs instead would leave you short. This math divides by (1 − margin) so the percentage you want is the percentage you actually keep.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: pricing math like this one, job profit, and cash flow, all in shop language.
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The wage on the paycheck is only part of what an hour of labor costs you. Payroll taxes, workers' comp, and benefits ride on top — and only some of the hours you pay for ever get billed to a job. The number at the end is the one your prices have to beat.
One typical crew member. Taxes and comp are percentages of the wage — check your last payroll report or comp policy if you're not sure.
Loaded cost, and what each billed hour actually has to cover.
Drive time, rain days, shop time, and callbacks all get paid — they just don't get billed. The fewer of your paid hours land on a job, the more each billed hour has to carry.
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Rent, insurance, office salaries — the bills that show up whether you sell anything or not. This shows the sales you need every month just to cover them, before a dime of profit. Everything above this line is yours; everything below it comes out of your pocket.
Two numbers: what it costs to keep the doors open each month, and how much of every sales dollar your jobs eat.
Sales needed to cover fixed expenses at your job-cost percentage.
Daily is the monthly number spread over 22 working days. Watch what happens when the job-cost percentage creeps up a few points — the break-even line moves fast, and it moves against you.
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Profit on paper doesn't make payroll — cash in the bank does. Line up what you have, what's coming in, and what's going out, week by week for a full quarter. If there's a short week coming, you want to see it now, not on payday.
Weekly averages are fine — this is an early-warning system, not an audit.
Ending balance each week, at your current pace.
Week by week
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A machine costs money every hour it runs — whether the invoice shows it or not. Depreciation, insurance, fuel, and repairs all ride along on every job. Know your true hourly cost and you know the floor your equipment rate can never go below.
One machine. What you paid for it, how long it'll last, and what it burns to run.
Every cost the machine carries, spread over the hours it actually works.
Depreciation is real money even though no bill arrives for it — the machine is worth less every hour it runs, and one day it has to be replaced. If your rate doesn't cover this number, you're slowly selling the machine to your customers at a loss.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: equipment cost math like this one, pricing, and cash flow, all in shop language.
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The salary is never the real cost. Payroll taxes, workers' comp, and benefits ride on top — figure roughly a third more before the new hire turns a wrench. This shows the true monthly cost next to the new revenue they have to bring in to pay for themselves.
The offer you're thinking about — and the work this person would actually generate.
Salary plus burden — what this hire actually takes out of the account every month.
Be honest about the revenue number — a new hire takes weeks to get up to speed, and the revenue only counts if there's sold work waiting for them. Hiring ahead of demand is how good shops get cash-poor.
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A 10% discount sounds small. But the discount comes straight out of your profit — not out of your costs — so the hole is far bigger than it looks. This shows how many extra jobs you'd have to win just to make the same money you make now.
A typical job, your real margin on it, and the discount on the table.
Same job, same costs — the discount comes out of the profit line only.
The math is brutal because your costs don't drop with your price — materials, labor, and fuel still cost what they cost. The thinner your margin, the more extra volume a discount demands.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: pricing math like this one, margins, and cash flow, all in shop language.
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Slow seasons don't kill shops overnight — they drain the account a little every month until the wall shows up. This takes your cash, your fixed costs, and your slow-season revenue and tells you exactly when that wall is.
Fixed costs are the bills that arrive whether work does or not.
How long the cash carries the fixed bills at slow-season revenue.
Knowing the wall's date changes the conversation — you can line up work, trim costs, or talk to your banker while you still have months of cash behind you, instead of days.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: cash planning like this one, runway, and loan ratios, all in shop language.
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"While you're at it…" is where job profit goes to die. Every change has a real cost — materials, labor hours, equipment — and if you don't price it with markup before the work starts, you just donated it. Run the change through here first.
Just the change — not the original job. Everything the extra work actually adds.
True cost of the change, plus your markup — agreed before the work starts.
Get it in writing before the work starts — a signed change order is a receivable, a handshake is a donation. The markup isn't greed; it covers the scheduling disruption and the risk every change carries.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: change-order math like this one, job profit, and pricing, all in shop language.
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A busy truck isn't always a profitable truck. Add up everything one truck or crew carries for a month — payment, fuel, maintenance, wages — and set it against what that truck actually billed. The margin tells you whether it's a business or just a job with a payment book.
One truck, one month. Revenue it generated and every cost it carried.
Revenue minus every cost the truck carries, for one month.
Run every truck through this. The fleet average hides the loser — and one truck bleeding a few hundred a month quietly eats what the best truck earns.
Join the weekly email and take your numbers with you — save a clean one-pager for your banker or CPA. One plain-talk money lesson for owners every week: truck and crew math like this one, job profit, and cash flow, all in shop language.
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Growth spends cash before it makes cash. Bigger sales mean bigger material orders, bigger payroll weeks, and more money floating in receivables — all before the new work pays you back. This shows how much cash the growth run ties up, so you can line it up first.
Where sales are now, where you want them, and what your jobs cost to run.
Extra job costs you'll front every month at the new sales level.
This is the number behind "we're growing and we're broke." The work is profitable — the cash is just stuck in materials, payroll, and receivables. A line of credit sized before the growth starts is what separates a ramp from a wreck.
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When a customer pays in 90 days instead of 30, they're borrowing from you — at your cost of money, not theirs. If you're carrying a line of credit while they sit on your invoice, this is the interest you're paying for the privilege of waiting.
The invoice that's aging, and what your money costs you.
Interest you're effectively fronting while the invoice ages.
Multiply this across every slow-paying customer and the number gets real fast. Net-30 terms with early-pay discounts — or deposits up front — aren't paperwork. They're profit protection.
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