Pricing
Hourly rate, day rate, and the project price. They still have to pay you after tax and the hours you can't bill.
I start from the money you want in your pocket. Divide a salary by 2,080 and the number you publish can't pay the rent.
Billable hours are the weeks you bill, times the hours you can invoice in a week.
If expenses are deductible, revenue equals expenses, plus take-home divided by (1 minus the tax rate). Tax is on profit. The other reading is (expenses plus take-home) divided by (1 minus the tax rate). That one grosses expenses up as if they were salary.
The floor is that revenue divided by billable hours. A slow-month buffer increases the take-home you gross up. It doesn't mark up expenses. I divide a platform fee out afterwards, because the marketplace keeps a cut of the invoice. A revision buffer only stretches the project price. I round the quote up to the cent, so an hour times your billable hours isn't under the revenue.
A day rate is the invoice rate times the hours you sell as a day. If you charge VAT, it goes on top of the quote. I don't add it here.
I opened the calculators that come up for this search. A target salary divided by 2,080 was in there. Tax added on top of an after-tax number was in there too, and that comes out too low. Expenses got grossed up even when they were already deductible. I found lists of other tools, and forms that hide the number until you sign up.
I left market-rate tables out. Your costs are yours. What someone else invoices is a different question.
Type 40 and the calculator obeys. The rate comes out too small. Those 40 hours include the proposal, the invoice, and the Tuesday with no client. I'd type 20 to 25 billable hours for a solo week. The default here is 20, across 46 weeks, so 920 hours. Don't leave it at 2,080.
If the floor looks high, you typed hours you won't bill, or the take-home is more than this year will produce. Cut the rate to make the quote easier and you leave the costs unpaid.
The floor is your number. You don't know their range yet. "What's your budget?" lets them say the first number. If they hand it back, you're the one who has to talk, with no number from them.
When you want both ranges in before either of you sees the other, that's how FairPrice works. The drawing on that page is one range at $800 to $1,500 and the other at $1,000 to $2,000. The overlap is $1,000 to $1,500. The price on that drawing is $1,250, the midpoint of the overlap. A gap up to 15% of the narrower range is still a match, at the midpoint of the gap. Wider than that is a miss.
Use the floor first. If you don't want to send that number, the signs are in signs you're undercharging. If you've never set a rate, the first-time rate is the sketch. It says not to invoice that sketch. Hourly against a fixed project price is a separate choice.
Weeks times billable hours. When expenses are deductible, revenue equals expenses, plus take-home divided by (1 minus the tax rate). The floor is that revenue divided by the hours.
I would type 20 to 25 in a week you thought was 40. Count a year of that, not 52 times 40.
Yes, by dividing take-home by (1 minus the tax rate). The box wants one effective percent of profit. US self-employment tax is 15.3% of 92.35% of net earnings, the Social Security part stops at the wage base, and half of that tax is deductible before income tax. Do not paste 15.3 in and call it done.
Multiply the invoice rate by the hours you will sell as a day. Six or seven is more honest than eight. If you are VAT registered, add VAT on the quote. This calculator does not.