Break-Even Calculator: How Many Jobs a Month You Need
Work out how many jobs a month cover your costs. A free break-even calculator plus what to do when the number is higher than you can sell.
How Many Jobs a Month Do You Need to Break Even?
Divide your monthly fixed costs by the gross profit you make on an average job. That is the number of jobs a month that keeps the business alive; everything above it is profit and everything below it comes out of your savings. Most owners have never calculated it, which is why a busy month and a profitable month feel like the same thing until the bank says otherwise. The calculator does it now.
Break-even calculator
Subtract the direct cost of a job from what you charge for it to get gross profit, then divide your monthly fixed costs by that number.
| Monthly fixed costs Truck payment, insurance, phone, software, marketing, your own draw. | $6,000 |
|---|---|
| What you charge for an average job | $650 |
| Materials and labor on that job Only what you would not spend if the job did not happen. | $230 |
| Gross profit per job | $420 |
| Jobs a month to break even Everything above this number is profit. Everything below it comes out of your savings. | 15 |
| Revenue a month to break even | $9,750 |
Two inputs decide everything here, and both are commonly wrong. Fixed costs get understated because small recurring charges do not feel like overhead. Gross profit gets overstated because owners subtract materials but forget the labor that only exists because the job exists.
What Counts as a Fixed Cost
Fixed costs are what you pay in a month when no work comes in at all. If a quiet January would still produce the bill, it is fixed.
- Vehicle payment, commercial insurance, and base fuel
- Liability insurance, licensing and bonding, spread monthly
- Phone, software, website hosting
- Rent on a shop, yard or storage unit
- Marketing you are committed to, including lead platform subscriptions
- Your own draw — the pay you need to take out of the business every month
- Any salaried staff, whether or not they are on a job
Gross Profit Is Not Revenue
Gross profit on a job is what you charge minus what that job cost you directly — materials, subcontractors, and the hourly labor you paid because the work happened. It is not the invoice, and it is not the invoice minus materials. A $650 job with $150 of materials and $80 of paid labor produces $420 of gross profit, and $420 is the number the calculator needs.
If your gross profit per job is unclear, that is the more urgent problem: it means you do not currently know which of your jobs make money. The contractor profit margin guide works through the distinction, and the hourly rate calculator fixes the pricing side.
When the Number Comes Back Too High
If break-even lands above the jobs you can realistically sell in a month, the business does not have a marketing problem — it has an arithmetic problem, and more leads will not fix it. There are exactly four levers.
| Lever | What it does | How fast it works |
|---|---|---|
| Raise prices | Increases gross profit per job, lowering the count directly | Immediately, on new quotes |
| Cut fixed costs | Lowers the numerator — the subscription audit nobody wants to do | Within a month |
| Reduce job costs | Better material buying, less rework, tighter scheduling | Weeks to months |
| Sell bigger jobs | Same job count, more gross profit each | Slowest — it changes who you sell to |
Raising prices is nearly always the fastest and the one owners try last. A 10% price rise on a job with a 40% gross margin lifts gross profit per job by a quarter, which cuts the break-even count by a fifth without a single new customer.
Recalculate When Anything Changes
Break-even is not a one-time exercise. A new truck payment, an insurance renewal, a hire, or a fuel spike all move it, and a business that grows revenue while quietly moving its break-even can run out of cash on the way up. Recalculate every quarter and every time you add a fixed cost — particularly before a hire, where the real cost of a first employee has to go into the fixed costs before you decide.
This number belongs in your business plan, next to the overhead schedule it comes from. Moil Professional at $25/month writes that plan — overhead, pricing, break-even and three-year projections — from your own trade, service area and prices, in English and Spanish.
The Seasonal Break-Even Nobody Calculates
A monthly break-even assumes every month is the same, and in a service business no month is. A landscaper does not break even in January. An HVAC shop does not break even in October. Averaging the year hides the two or three months where the business genuinely loses money, and those are the months that decide whether it survives.
Run it twice: once for a peak month and once for your slowest. The slow-month figure is the one that tells you how much cash the business must be carrying by the time the season turns. If your slow month runs a $4,000 deficit and lasts three months, the business needs $12,000 banked before it arrives — and that money has to be set aside during the busy season, when it feels most like profit.
| Month type | Jobs sold | Break-even | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peak | 38 | 15 | Surplus — bank the difference |
| Average | 19 | 15 | Modest profit |
| Slow | 8 | 15 | Deficit — funded from the peak |
This is also the calculation that decides when a business can carry a hire. A seasonal business paying a year-round wage has to clear the break-even across the whole year, not just in the months when the phone rings, which is why so many first hires are made in June and regretted in December.
Which Jobs Should You Actually Chase?
Break-even tells you how many jobs you need. It does not tell you which ones, and the two answers are often different. Rank your job types by gross profit per hour rather than gross profit per job: a $600 job producing $300 of gross profit in two hours is worth more than a $2,000 job producing $700 in eight, even though the second one looks like the better invoice.
Run that calculation across your last three months of work and it usually reorders the priority list. Most service businesses find that the small, fast, repeatable job they treat as filler is their most profitable hour, and the large project they chase for the headline number is barely above the floor once the site time, the return visits and the snagging are counted.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I calculate my break-even point?
- Divide your monthly fixed costs by the gross profit on an average job. With $6,000 of fixed costs and $420 of gross profit per job, you need about 15 jobs a month to break even. Gross profit is the price of the job minus its direct costs — materials, subcontractors and the labor the job caused.
- Should my own salary be in fixed costs?
- Yes. A break-even calculated without the owner's pay tells you the point at which the business stops losing money, which is not the same as the point at which it works. Put in the monthly draw you actually need, and the number you get is the one worth managing against.
- What is the difference between gross profit and revenue?
- Revenue is what you invoice. Gross profit is what is left after the costs that exist only because the job happened — materials, subcontractors, hourly labor on that job. A busy month with high revenue and thin gross profit can still lose money once fixed costs are paid, which is why break-even uses gross profit.
- My break-even is higher than the jobs I can sell. What now?
- That is an arithmetic problem, not a lead problem. Raise prices, cut fixed costs, reduce job costs, or sell larger jobs. Raising prices is the fastest: with a 40% gross margin, a 10% price rise lifts gross profit per job by about a quarter and cuts the break-even count by roughly a fifth without any new customers.
- How often should I recalculate break-even?
- Every quarter, and immediately whenever a fixed cost changes — a hire, a vehicle payment, an insurance renewal or a new software subscription. Businesses most often run out of cash while growing, because revenue rose and nobody noticed the break-even rising faster.
Put the break-even in your plan
Moil Professional at $25/month writes your business plan with the overhead schedule, pricing tiers and break-even worked out from your own numbers, in English and Spanish. Market Pro at $75/month adds the Moil360 marketing calendar.
Start Professional at $25/month