A busy project can still be an expensive project.

01 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Start with the fee you can actually recognize

Use the amount belonging to the project, excluding sales tax and unrelated client income. A signed fixed fee is different from an hourly budget: if you only invoice approved hours, use a realistic revenue estimate for those hours. Do not treat a draft proposal, a purchase order ceiling or an unpaid invoice as interchangeable with cash received. This calculator answers a delivery-economics question; your cash forecast needs its own collection dates.

02 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Count the work that did not make it onto the estimate

Delivery cost includes more than the designer or developer doing the visible work. Add account management, internal review, project coordination and revisions if those activities consume paid capacity. A blended hourly cost is useful when the team mix is stable. If a specialist-heavy phase costs much more, calculate that phase separately or use a weighted average based on expected hours. Include contractors and direct expenses once, without duplicating them in your hourly cost.

03 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Work through a concrete example

The prefilled example is a planning scenario, not a customer result. Project fee: $12,000; Planned delivery hours: 120 hours; Extra or unplanned hours: 20 hours; Average hourly delivery cost: 50 $/hour; Other direct project costs: $1,000. Change these values to match your situation, then calculate again. Save the CSV if you want a record to discuss with a colleague or compare with a later review.

Direct cost = (planned hours + extra hours) × hourly cost + expenses. Profit = fee − direct cost. Margin = profit ÷ fee.

04 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Read profit and margin together

Profit tells you how much money the project contributes in absolute terms. Margin tells you what share of its fee remains after direct costs. A large project can contribute more money with a lower margin than a smaller engagement. Neither result alone proves that the work is worth accepting: consider capacity, payment risk, strategic fit and whether the project blocks more suitable work. Compare like-for-like periods and cost assumptions before ranking projects.

05 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Use a before-and-after review

Save one result with the original estimate and another with the revised delivery hours. The change reveals how much contribution was consumed by scope growth or an inaccurate estimate. For an active project, separate hours already used from the remaining estimate so that a reassuring historical result does not hide expensive work still to come. For a completed project, record the specific cause of the difference and update the next proposal or scope checklist.

06 / FREE AGENCY TOOL

Turn the estimate into an operating routine

Review material projects weekly with the delivery owner and the person responsible for the commercial relationship. Ask which remaining deliverable creates the greatest uncertainty and whether a change needs client approval. A spreadsheet or one-off calculator is enough for an occasional decision. When you need the same answer across many live projects, connect billing setup, tracked time, cost rates and expenses in the project workspace.