Overhead Recovery Rate Calculator

Overhead recovery rate turns the fixed cost of running the business — rent, admin pay, insurance, vehicle and equipment depreciation, dispatch software, fuel, utilities — into a number you can add to every quote, before profit. No single method is "correct"; the right one depends on which figure you already know. The tool ships all three:

Per billable hour:
  totalBillableHours = billableHoursPerTech × techCount
  overheadPerHour    = annualOverhead / totalBillableHours

Markup % on direct cost:
  recoveryPct        = (annualOverhead / annualDirectCosts) × 100

% of revenue (sanity check):
  recoveryPct        = (annualOverhead / annualRevenue) × 100

Sample-job load:
  perHour:           overheadLoaded = sampleJobHours × overheadPerHour
  markup / revenue:  overheadLoaded = sampleJobDirectCost × recoveryPct / 100
  all modes:         priceWithOverhead = sampleJobDirectCost + overheadLoaded   (pre-profit)

Worked example. $120,000 overhead ÷ (1,400 billable hrs × 4 techs = 5,600 hrs) = $21.43 / hr. A 6-hour job then carries 6 × $21.43 = $128.57 of overhead, so a $1,500 direct-cost job becomes $1,628.57 with overhead loaded — before profit.

Why % of revenue is a sanity check, not a markup. Applying a revenue-share percentage as a markup on direct cost over-recovers, because revenue is not the same as direct cost. Use it to target a margin, not to mark up individual jobs.

These figures are estimates for your own forecast — no source publishes a vetted industry range, and your rate is never fixed or constant. This tool informs how you price inside your own quoting workflow; it does not store an overhead ledger, customer or job records, or run dispatch, routing, payments, or invoicing.

Sources: ServiceTitan (per-hour method, $100,000 ÷ 2,916 = $34.29/hr); Construction Executive ($245,000 ÷ $529,000 = 46.3%); getVergo ($300,000 ÷ $1,000,000 = 30%); WorkWave ($4,000 ÷ $50,000 = 8% of revenue).