Print job profit calculator
Work out the true cost, profit, and margin on any print or decoration job — materials, labour, setup time, and overhead included — and see the price you'd need to charge to hit a target margin.
Job profit
Loading calculator…
How the job cost is built
Total job cost = materials + run labour + setup labour + overhead + other one-off costs. Materials and overhead scale with quantity; setup is charged once per job, which is why small runs cost disproportionately more per unit.
Run labour converts your minutes-per-unit into hours and multiplies by your hourly rate: (minutes ÷ 60) × rate × quantity. Setup labour is (setup minutes ÷ 60) × rate, once.
Margin vs markup — they are not the same
Margin is profit as a share of revenue: profit ÷ revenue. Markup is profit as a share of cost: profit ÷ cost. A job that costs £4.18 and sells for £7.50 has a 44% margin but a 79% markup. Quoting "50% markup" when you meant "50% margin" underprices the job — it's one of the most common pricing mistakes in small shops.
When you set a target margin, the required price is cost ÷ (1 − margin). To make a 60% margin on a £4.18 unit cost you need to charge £10.45 — not £6.69 (which is what adding 60% markup would give you).
Assumptions
The default labour rate (18/hour) and material cost are illustrative starting points, not industry benchmarks.
Setup time is charged at the same hourly rate as run labour.
Overhead is entered as a per-unit allocation rather than derived from your accounts.
Limitations
- Results are estimates for quoting support — they are not accounting, tax, or pricing advice.
- The calculator doesn't model quantity price breaks, wastage, or reprints; add expected waste into material cost per unit.
- VAT/sales tax is excluded — work in net (ex-tax) figures throughout.
Common questions
Should I include my own time as labour?
Yes. If you run the press yourself, your time still has a cost — price it in, or every quote silently assumes you work for free. Use the labour cost calculator to find a realistic hourly figure.
Why is my small run so expensive per unit?
Setup time is spread across the whole job. Thirty minutes of setup adds £9 of cost at £18/hour whether you print 5 units or 500 — that's £1.80 per unit on a 5-piece run but under 2p on a 500-piece run. This is why minimum order charges exist.
What margin should a print shop aim for?
There's no universal number — it depends on your overheads, competition, and how much of your capacity a job consumes. The useful discipline is knowing your true cost per unit first, then choosing margin deliberately instead of matching a competitor's price blind.
Calculator
Break-even calculator
Find how many jobs or units you need to sell each month to cover your fixed costs, and how many more to hit a profit target — using contribution margin, the standard break-even method.
Calculator
True labour cost calculator
Find what an hour of work actually costs your business — wages plus employer on-costs, spread over the hours someone really works and the share of time that's productive — the number your job pricing should use.
Guide
How to price print jobs: costs, margin, and what shops get wrong
A practical pricing method for print and decoration businesses: build the true cost of a job (materials, labour, setup, overhead), choose margin deliberately, and avoid the mistakes — free owner labour, margin/markup confusion, and copying competitor prices.
Checklist
New-order intake checklist
Everything to confirm before a custom print or decoration order enters production — spec, artwork, quantities, dates, and payment terms — so problems get caught in a five-minute review instead of on the press.
Turn these numbers into quotes customers can approve
damantra takes the pricing you work out here and runs the whole job — quote, approval, production board, portal, invoice — in one calm system.