Calculator
HVAC Overhead Calculator
Work out exactly how much indirect cost every hour and every job has to carry. Itemise your monthly overhead (rent, admin payroll, insurance, vehicles, marketing, software) then enter your crew and billable efficiency to get your overhead rate per billable hour, your overhead as a share of revenue, and the markup on direct cost your prices need. Free, no signup.
Free
More overhead costs
Total monthly overhead$333,000 a year
$27,75030.2% of revenue7,000 hrs billable/yr
Overhead per billable hour
$47.57
Every sold hour must carry this before you pay for labour, parts, or profit.
Overhead load is in a healthy range
Overhead per jobAcross 120 jobs a month
$231Overhead at a glance
Overhead per billable hour
$47.57Total overhead ÷ total billable hours
Billable hours / tech / yr
1,400 hrs2,000 hrs paid at 70.0% billable
Unsold hours you still pay for
3,000 hrsDrive time, shop time, callbacks, and PTO across the crew
Overhead % of revenue
30.2%HVAC overhead: 25-35% of revenue is the working band
Net margin after overhead
14.4%$13,250/mo left after direct costs and overhead
Recover it in your price
Overhead recovery markup
54.4%Overhead ÷ direct job costs, add this much to cost just to break even
Break-even multiplier
1.54×Multiply a job's direct cost by this to cover overhead and nothing more
Markup for 15.0% net
81.7%1.82× on direct cost. Price = (cost + overhead) ÷ (1 − margin)
Don’t mark cost up by your overhead percentage
Overhead is 30.2% of revenue but needs a 54.4% markup on cost, cost is the smaller base. Marking up $51,000 of direct cost by the revenue percentage recovers only $15,383, leaving $12,367 of overhead unpaid every month.
Where your overhead goes
- Rent & facilities: $3,800
- Insurance & bonds: $2,200
- Office & admin payroll: $11,000
- Vehicles & equipment: $4,500
- Marketing: $3,000
- Software & subscriptions: $1,100
- Utilities & phone: $750
- Licenses & professional fees: $400
- Other overhead: $1,000
$27,750/mo · $333,000/yr of indirect cost. No single job causes it, so every job has to carry a share.
Industry benchmarks
- Overhead % of revenue
- 25-35%
- Overhead per billable hour
- $40-50 (ACCA)
- Billable hours / tech / yr
- 1,200-1,500
- Net margin after overhead
- 8-15% typical
ACCA puts HVAC overhead at $40-50 per billable hour. Measured HVAC billable time ≈ 65%; 70-85% is healthy.
What you'll get
Itemise your monthly overhead
Enter every cost no single job causes: rent and facilities, office and admin payroll, insurance and bonds, vehicles, marketing, software, utilities, licences, and the rest. The total is what your billable hours have to absorb.
Set your real billable capacity
Technicians × paid hours per week × paid weeks, cut down by your billable efficiency. Measured studies put HVAC techs near 65% and FieldEdge calls 70-85% healthy, so using 100% is the mistake that halves your rate.
Allocate it onto an hour and onto a price
Get overhead per billable hour, overhead per job, and overhead as a % of revenue graded against your trade’s band, plus the markup on direct cost that actually recovers it, and the shortfall if you mark cost up by the revenue percentage instead.
This tool allocates overhead onto an hour and onto a price. For the sales volume that covers it, use the Break-Even Calculator. For one tech’s fully burdened wage, use the Employee Cost Calculator.
How it works
- 1
Itemise your monthly overhead
Enter every cost no single job causes: rent and facilities, office and admin payroll, insurance and bonds, vehicles, marketing, software, utilities, licences, and the rest. The total is what your billable hours have to absorb.
- 2
Set your real billable capacity
Technicians × paid hours per week × paid weeks, cut down by your billable efficiency. Measured studies put HVAC techs near 65% and FieldEdge calls 70-85% healthy, so using 100% is the mistake that halves your rate.
- 3
Allocate it onto an hour and onto a price
Get overhead per billable hour, overhead per job, and overhead as a % of revenue graded against your trade’s band, plus the markup on direct cost that actually recovers it, and the shortfall if you mark cost up by the revenue percentage instead.
How hvac contractors calculate an overhead rate
Overhead is every cost that keeps the doors open without being caused by any one job: rent, the office team, insurance, trucks, software, advertising. It never appears on a work order, which is exactly why it goes unrecovered. Allocating it is a two-step job: total the indirect cost, then divide it by an allocation base. Divide by billable hours and you get a rate per sold hour. Divide by direct costs and you get the markup your prices need. Both come from the same predetermined-overhead-rate method used in cost accounting.
The base is where most shops go wrong. A tech paid 2,000 hours a year does not sell 2,000 hours: drive time, shop time, callbacks, and PTO mean 1,200 to 1,500 billable hours is typical, so the true rate is far higher than a naive 2,080-hour divisor suggests. The second trap is confusing overhead as a percentage of revenue with a markup on cost. Cost is the smaller base, so a shop with 30% overhead needs roughly a 43% markup, not 30%. This calculator shows both numbers side by side and quantifies the monthly shortfall if you use the wrong one. Pair it with the Break-Even Calculator for the sales volume that covers overhead, the Employee Cost Calculator for one tech's burdened wage, and the Labor Rate and Job Pricing calculators to put the rate into your quotes.
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Overhead Calculator FAQs
Total your overhead for the year, then divide by your total billable hours. If overhead is $333,000 and five techs each sell 1,400 hours (7,000 hours total), your overhead rate is $333,000 ÷ 7,000 = $47.57 per billable hour. That amount has to be inside your price before you pay for labour, parts, or profit.
A direct job cost disappears if the job disappears: materials, the billable technician’s time, subcontractors, permits, and commission. Overhead does not. Rent, office and admin payroll, owner salary, general liability insurance, fleet costs, marketing, and software all get paid whether or not the phone rings. If you cannot point at a work order and say “this caused it,” it is overhead.
For home-service trades that count all non-job costs as overhead, 20-35% of revenue is the working band: roughly 25-35% for HVAC, 22-32% for plumbing, and 20-28% for electrical. Beware of the 8-15% figures you will also see quoted, because those count general and administrative expense only, with fleet and field-adjacent costs pushed into cost of goods sold. Compare like with like or the benchmark is meaningless.
Because they use different bases. Overhead as a percentage of revenue divides by the bigger number; a markup divides by cost, which is smaller. If overhead is 30% of a $100,000 month and direct costs are $70,000, the markup you need is $30,000 ÷ $70,000 = 42.9%. Marking up cost by 30% recovers only $21,000 and leaves $9,000 of overhead unpaid every month. Price by dividing, price = (cost + overhead) ÷ (1 − target margin), never by multiplying by one plus the margin.
Yes. Every tool on CloseCrew is free for contractors, no account required. Use it with the Break-Even Calculator to find the volume that covers your overhead, the Employee Cost Calculator to build one tech’s fully burdened cost, and the Labor Rate and Job Pricing calculators to get the rate into your quotes.
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