The Hidden Per-Job Costs Contractors Forget to Quote
Masking tape, gloves, drop sheets, and fasteners rarely get their own line on a quote — priced individually they add up to real money, and priced at zero they come straight out of your margin.
List every small item you burn through on a job — tape, drop sheets, gloves, cleaning supplies, fasteners — with its cost, how many you buy, and how many jobs it lasts. (Cost each × Qty) ÷ Lasts gives you a $/job for each line, and the total is the number that belongs on every quote, not left unbilled.
How to read the inputs
Item Rows
- Five starter rows — tape, drop sheets, gloves & PPE, cleaning supplies, fasteners — ship with names filled in but cost and quantity blank; add trade-specific rows with + Add item
Cost, Qty & Lasts
- (Cost each × Qty) ÷ Lasts = $/job for that row; Lasts is floored at 1, so a blank or 0 never divides by zero
Business Volume
- Days/week × weeks/year and jobs/year × area/job only feed the Per Year, Per Day, and Per Area views — they have zero effect on the headline Per Job number
Other Views
- Per Year, Per Working Day, and Per Area (Per Area shown to four decimal places) — use whichever denominator matches how you actually price a job
Worked example
Leave Business Volume at its own defaults — 5 working days a week, 48 weeks a year, 60 jobs a year, and an 80 ft² typical job — then fill in the five starter rows with real numbers: $8 masking tape, 2 rolls, used up every job ($16.00); $25 drop sheets that last 3 jobs ($8.33); a $35 box of gloves & PPE that lasts 5 jobs ($7.00); $12 of cleaning supplies that last 2 jobs ($6.00); and $15 of small fasteners used up every job ($15.00). Those five lines add up to a Consumables & PPE Per Job figure of $52.33 — spread out, that is $3,140.00 a year, $13.08 per working day, and $0.6542 per ft².
See your own consumables add up
Start from the five starter-pack rows, or add your own trade-specific items — cost, quantity, and lasts all update the Per Job total live.
Full tool is a row-based table — add unlimited custom items with their own cost, quantity, and lasts value, then push the result straight into your Business Profile overhead.
Open the live calculator →Common mistakes
- Leaving Qty or Cost each blank on a row, which silently zeroes that line’s $/job — it shows $0.00 and is easy to mistake for “not needed” rather than “still needs a value”
- Confusing Qty with how much you use per job — Qty is how many units you bought, and Lasts is what turns that bulk purchase into a per-job rate; a $30 box of gloves covering 5 jobs is Cost 30 · Qty 1 · Lasts 5, not Qty 5 · Lasts 1
- Leaving Lasts at the default of 1 for genuinely reusable items like drop sheets or a box of PPE, which massively overstates their per-job cost — a $25 drop sheet reused over 3 jobs is $8.33 per job, not $25.00
- Toggling the Area Unit between ft² and m² without re-entering Typical Area Per Job — the toggle only flips the label, it does not convert the number, so the Per Area figure silently changes meaning
- Stopping at the five pre-loaded generic rows and assuming the list is complete — they are placeholders at $0.00, and trade-specific items like respirator cartridges or extension cords still need to be added with + Add item
Once you have a real Per Job figure, treat it as a fixed line on every quote instead of a rounding error — the same tape, gloves, and drop sheets you already restock for every job either get priced in, or come straight out of your margin. It belongs in the same overhead stack as your insurance, software, and licensing costs — priced in on purpose, not left to erode your margin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the calculator show $0.00 until I fill in the rows?
The five starter rows load with names already in place — masking tape, drop sheets, gloves and PPE, cleaning supplies, small fasteners — but cost and quantity are left blank on purpose so nothing is calculated from invented numbers (Lasts defaults to 1, used up every job, until you change it). The moment any row has a real cost and quantity, its $/job appears and the total updates.
What is the difference between Qty and Lasts?
Qty is how many units you buy at once, not how many you use per job — Lasts is what turns that bulk purchase into a per-job rate. A $30 box of gloves that covers 5 jobs is Cost 30, Qty 1, Lasts 5, which works out to $6.00 per job. Entering Qty 5 and leaving Lasts at 1 would wrongly compute $150.00 per job instead.
Do the Business Volume fields change my Per Job number?
No. Working days per week, weeks worked per year, jobs per year, and typical area per job only convert the Per Job total into Per Year, Per Working Day, and Per Area figures — they have zero effect on the headline Per Job number, which is driven entirely by the item rows. If you only need the figure to add to a quote, you can leave that whole section alone.
Is a few dollars of tape and gloves per job really worth tracking?
On its own, no single item looks worth the trouble — but CFMA’s 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker puts average gross profit margin at just over 16% for specialty trade contractors, so every unbilled dollar of consumables comes straight off that thin a margin, job after job. Small, recurring, and unbilled is exactly the kind of cost that is easiest to lose track of and hardest to notice once it is gone.