A busy year and nothing in the bank is how trades lose money — the bids were a little low, and the changes were never charged. This workbook is for the other half of the trade: pricing the job so it pays. It turns a bid from a gut feeling into a stack of honest numbers you can defend, and it protects the margin you estimated all the way to the final invoice.
One connected file, the whole pricing side of the job. Build the estimate line by line, mark it up to the margin you actually need, find the overhead your prices must carry, and keep the scope you priced from quietly growing for free. Built with remodeling worked examples — the method fits every trade.
What’s inside:
- ✦ A line-item estimate builder (Excel) — one row per task in five buckets: materials (with a waste % so offcuts don’t eat your margin), loaded labor, subcontractors, equipment and fees, and contingency. Pre-loaded with a full bathroom remodel that totals to a defensible bid.
- ✦ A markup & margin calculator (Excel) — markup is measured against cost, margin against price, and they’re never the same number. Set the margin you need; the workbook hands you the markup and the multiplier to charge. (A 30% margin needs a 42.9% markup — getting that one number wrong quietly underprices every job.)
- ✦ An overhead calculator (Excel) — add up a year of insurance, trucks, office, and the unbilled hours, divide by your job cost, and it works out the gross margin every bid must carry before a dollar of profit.
- ✦ A change-order log (Excel) — a change to the scope is a change to the price. Price each one at your markup and track the approved ones, so “while you’re at it” is a line item, not free work.
- ✦ A unit-cost library (Excel) — your own price book. Fill it from real invoices and timesheets, and the next estimate starts from your data instead of a blank cell.
- ✦ A client bid summary (Excel) — pulls the total from your estimate and lays out the scope. Hand the homeowner a clean, professional bid; your costs and markup never show.
- ✦ A Start Here guide + four more PDFs — the five cost buckets, markup vs margin, overhead recovery, change orders and the scope gaps, a remodeling takeoff checklist by phase, and printable job sheets for the clipboard.
The working part really works: the Excel workbook has seven tabs of live formulas — type your numbers and the bucket totals, the markup, the bid, the overhead rate, and the change-order prices compute for you. It imports cleanly into Google Sheets and opens in LibreOffice Calc, too.
Own it, don’t rent it. A one-time purchase you keep and reuse on every job — the structured workbook that sits between a blank spreadsheet and a rented monthly app. No subscription, no per-seat fee. And when the jobs outgrow a spreadsheet, it graduates to Ardent Seller — jobs, materials, and margin across the whole pipeline, with a free plan to start.
Try it free first: the Bid Markup & Job-Cost Calculator — enter your cost, markup, and overhead to get a price and margin, free and ungated.
Evergreen — use it any year: the method and the math are timeless, and the logs use a date column you fill in yourself.
Instant digital download. Nothing ships. The files are yours to use in your own business.
Created with AI assistance under Ardent Workshop’s creative direction, then reviewed and edited before release. This is a business reference and framework, not licensed estimating, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Every figure in the examples is illustrative — your material prices, labor rates, and unit costs are yours to enter — and the unit-cost library ships with placeholder numbers, not a regional price guide. Permits, licensing, insurance, contracts, and building-code compliance are yours to verify for your jurisdiction. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any supplier, trade association, or marketplace.
