What do you have to charge?

Gross wage in, target margin in, billing rate out, and next to it the breakdown that shows where every euro goes. Vacation, sickness and public holidays are the item most calculations in your head forget. No sign-up. The link is the calculation.

Two numbers, one rate

The gross wage is in the employment contract, the target margin in your head. Everything in between is below under "Adjust assumptions" and is preset so you can start here and not there.

Your employee

Gross wage per hour €/h

The employee's agreed hourly wage, without on-costs.

Target margin %

From revenue, not as a markup on costs.²

Wage per paid hour: €24.40
Wage per billed hour: €30.62
+ Overhead per billed hour: €2.52
+ Other costs: €1
Cost per hour: €34.14
Billing rate: €40.17

At a gross wage of €20 and a target margin of 15 % you have to charge €40.17 per hour, factor 2.01. That leaves €6.02 per billed hour, €835.46 per month.²

Where the euro goes

Six items, all in euros per billed hour. Downtime is not a calculation of its own but the markup that vacation, sickness and public holidays put on every hour that actually occurs at the client.¹

Breakdown of the rate Total: €40.17 per hour³

Gross wage: €20 · 49.8 %; per paid hour, as in the employment contract
Payroll on-costs: €4.40 · 11.0 %; Employer contributions, levies, premiums
Downtime: €6.22 · 15.5 %; Vacation, sickness, public holidays: paid, not billable
Overhead: €2.52 · 6.3 %; Scheduling, rent, software, administration
Other: €1 · 2.5 %; Travel, allowances, clothing, check-ups
Margin: €6.02 · 15.0 %; what is left after all costs

And at twenty?

The question always comes up in the conversation, and it comes quickly. Here is the answer for every rung: rate, factor and what is left per month and employee. Your row is marked.

Billing rate per target margin, at constant cost
Target margin	Rate per hour	Factor	CM per month
0 %	€34.14	1.71	€0
5 %	€35.94	1.80	€249.17
10 %	€37.93	1.90	€526.03
15 %	€40.17	2.01	€835.46
20 %	€42.68	2.13	€1,183.57
25 %	€45.52	2.28	€1,578.09
30 %	€48.77	2.44	€2,028.97

Your offer, checked

The rate is already on the table, or purchasing named one? Enter it and the page tells you what is left. Zero means: no offer.

The quoted rate

Your offer per hour €/h

0 = no offer. The bar above then gets no marker.

Adjust assumptions

The presets are approximations common in the industry, not collective-agreement values; if you know your own, enter them. They carry the same names as in the assignment calculator, so a link can be passed on.⁴

Other costs €/h

per billed hour

Weekly hours h

Payroll on-costs %

on the gross wage

Vacation days per year days

Sick days days

Public holidays on weekdays days

Overhead per month €

per employee

This gives 174 paid hours per month, of which 79.7 % billable, so 138.67 hours everything is spread over.

alluvo knows the rate of every framework contract and the wage of every employee, and tells you which assignment carries the margin before you have to calculate.

See the product Get to know alluvo

Footnotes

How it is calculated: wages are due for all paid hours, but you only earn on the billed ones. So it works in working days, 261 a year, 21.75 a month. Vacation, sickness and public holidays come off the billable days; the wage costs stay. The wage per paid hour becomes a higher wage per billed hour, and the overhead is spread over the same smaller number of hours. ↩
Margin on revenue, not a markup on costs: a 15% target margin means cost ÷ 0.85, not cost × 1.15. At €34 cost the difference is a good two euros per hour, one of the most common errors in calculations done in your head. The factor next to it is rate ÷ gross wage; it is a figure for the conversation, not a calculation input. ↩
Breakdown: the six items are each rounded to the cent, so their sum can differ by a cent from the stated rate. The calculation runs unrounded; only the output is rounded. ↩
What this calculator cannot do: industry surcharges and equal pay, surcharges for night, Sunday and holiday work, collective-agreement specifics, VAT, factoring and payment terms. The presets are approximations common in the industry, not collective-agreement values. It is a back-of-the-envelope calculation for a conversation, not tax or legal advice. ↩