WDO Termite Inspection Pricing Calculator: What to Charge
Price a WDO termite inspection from your own numbers: the walk by square footage, sub-area access, report writing, outbuildings, drive time, rush and account discounts.
How this is calculated
The fee is a straight build-up from time you enter. Three things behave deliberately: on-site time is per inspector and crew size multiplies it while the report is written once, the drive is tracked twice (every drive hour lands in your cost, only the share you choose to bill lands in the charge), and an account discount is applied after a rush surcharge rather than before it.
areaHours = (areaSqft ÷ 1000) × walkMinutes ÷ 60
onSite = fixed + areaHours + access + attic + outbuildings × each
crewHours = onSite × crewSize + reportHours
driveCrew = driveHours × crewSize
billedDrv = driveCrew × driveBillPct
labour = (crewHours + billedDrv) × chargeRate
buildUp = labour + addOns
rush = buildUp × rushPct
discount = (buildUp + rush) × accountDiscountPct
fee = max(buildUp + rush − discount, minimumFee)
tax = fee × taxRate
cost = (crewHours + driveCrew) × costRate
margin = (fee − cost) ÷ fee
hoursPerJob = onSite + reportHours + driveHours
jobsPerDay = floor(bookableHours ÷ hoursPerJob)The worked example. A 2,000 sq ft house at 15 minutes per 1,000 sq ft is half an hour of walking. Add half an hour of fixed on-site time, half an hour in the crawlspace, a quarter-hour attic and a quarter-hour shed and the visit is 2 hours for one inspector. A half-hour written report makes 2.5 billable crew-hours, and at a 120 charge-out rate that is a 300 fee before tax. The half-hour round trip is unbilled but still paid, so the job consumes 3 crew-hours and returns 100 per paid hour. At 8 bookable hours a day, three hours a job means two inspections, not the three an hourly quote implies.
No fee presets anywhere. Every currency field starts empty. The only pre-filled numbers are the walk rate, the fixed on-site time, the per-access and per-report hours and the per-outbuilding time, plus the example 2,000 sq ft footprint, the half-hour round trip and a crew of one, which are placeholder dimensions so the page has a job to work on rather than a typical property. Every one of them sits in an editable box. They are scoping conventions, not benchmarks and not published norms: they say only that a crawlspace takes longer than a slab and that a diagrammed form takes longer to produce than a findings sheet. How much longer is your number.
The report is the line most often given away. It is the thing the customer is actually buying on a property sale, and it happens after you leave, which is exactly why it falls out of an hourly quote. The tool books it as its own time and warns when a written report is promised with zero hours behind it. Crew size never multiplies it, because sending two inspectors does not make anyone write the report twice.
What this page does not tell you. It does not state what a wood-destroying-organism report must contain, which form your state accepts, who may sign one, or what the inspection must cover. Those requirements are set by state licensing law and they differ between states; asserting a specific rule here without a source would be inventing one, so the tool deliberately does not. Check your own licensing authority, then price the time that requirement actually costs you.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.
The fee is a build-up, not a lookup
A wood-destroying-organism inspection on a property sale is a standalone billable job, and it is priced badly more often than almost anything else on a pest route. The reason is structural: the quote gets given on the phone, off the square footage alone, before anyone knows what is under the house, and the deliverable gets written after the inspector has already left.
This calculator splits the job into the parts that actually consume time. The walk scales with the footprint. The access does not: a crawlspace or a basement costs time a slab never does, and that time is largely independent of the size of the house above it. The report is its own line, because it happens after the visit. The drive is tracked twice, landing in your cost in full and in your charge only to the extent you bill it.
What is under the house matters more than the square footage
The size box is the first question people ask and the least useful one. Two 2,000 sq ft houses, one on a slab and one over a tight crawlspace with stored goods against the access hatch, are not the same job and should not be the same fee. So the tool asks for the footprint, then asks what is under it, then separates the fixed on-site time that every visit costs regardless of either.
Outbuildings get their own line rather than being folded into the footprint, because a detached garage on the same report is a second structure, not extra square feet.
The report is the deliverable, and it is where the money leaks
On a property sale nobody is buying an opinion, they are buying a document that a lender, an agent and a buyer will all read. It is written at the desk, after the visit, which is precisely why it falls out of a fee quoted at the kerb. The tool books it as its own time, seeds a starting figure from the report type, and says so out loud when a written report is promised with zero hours behind it.
Crew size multiplies the on-site half of the job and never the report. Two inspectors halve the walk; they do not halve the writing.
The sheet the findings actually go on is a separate thing from the fee, and the WDO and termite inspection worksheet is the field-notes form for that part. Which report form your jurisdiction requires, who may sign it and what it must cover are licensing and statutory questions that differ between states. Those rules are deliberately not asserted anywhere on this page, because stating a specific one without a source would be inventing it. Check your own licensing authority, then price the time that requirement costs you.
Every money field starts empty
Search for a termite inspection price and the ranges come quickly. Follow their citations and they resolve to homeowner cost pages and lead-generation directories quoting each other, not a regulator, a trade body or a published survey. Under this site’s cite-or-omit rule that means the tool ships with none of them.
The only pre-filled numbers anywhere are time conventions: the walk rate per 1,000 sq ft, the fixed on-site time, the per-access and per-report hours and the per-outbuilding time. The 2,000 sq ft footprint, the half-hour round trip and the crew of one are example dimensions, there so the page has a job to work on rather than because they describe a typical property. Every one sits in an editable box. They are a scoping starting point, saying only that a crawlspace takes longer than a slab and a diagrammed form takes longer than a findings sheet. How much longer is your number, and you will have it after three timed inspections.
What happens after the report
A clear report on a sale is often the start of an account rather than the end of a job. If the finding is active or previous activity, the treatment itself prices on a different axis entirely, and the termite treatment cost estimator is where that quote gets built. If the conversation turns to ongoing warranty cover, the termite bond pricing calculator prices the annual renewal from what the warranty actually costs you to carry. For the sizing arithmetic behind any of the treatment options, the termite treatment sizing hub maps the calculators that turn a perimeter into gallons, stations and a slab pre-treat.
Everything runs in your browser: no account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. A planning aid, not a binding quote.