Overhead Cost Calculator

1. Fill in each overhead category. Start with the defaults and adjust to match your actual expenses. Every dollar you spend to keep the business running that is not tied to a specific job belongs here. Open each section and enter your real monthly numbers.

2. Set your fleet size. Enter the number of trucks you operate. The calculator multiplies per-truck costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance, payments) by your fleet size to get the total fleet overhead.

3. Enter your context numbers. The number of techs, billable hours per tech, annual revenue, daily service calls, and working days let the calculator translate raw overhead into per-hour and per-call figures you can use for pricing.

4. Review your results. Check whether your overhead percentage falls within the 30-50% target range. Use the per-hour and per-call numbers to make sure your service pricing covers overhead plus profit.

Overhead is every cost that keeps the business running but cannot be billed to a specific job. It includes rent, trucks, insurance, office salaries, software, marketing, licensing, pesticide storage, and chemical disposal. Unlike materials or tech labor, overhead does not change based on how many jobs you run in a given week.

Most pest control business owners know their overhead exists but have never added it up. That means they are guessing when they set prices. If your overhead is $22,000 per month and you do not know it, you cannot build it into your rates, and every job looks more profitable than it actually is.

The per-call number is the most important output for pest control. It tells you exactly how much overhead you burn for every service call a tech completes. If your overhead per call is $38 and you price a quarterly spray at $65, you only have $27 left to cover the tech's wages, chemicals, and profit. Knowing this number forces you to price correctly.

The category breakdown shows where your money goes so you can identify the biggest line items. People and fleet are almost always the top two. Pest control companies also need to account for licensing, CEU requirements, and chemical storage and disposal costs that other trades do not have.

Setting service prices. Before you decide what to charge per service call or monthly contract, you need to know your overhead per call. This calculator gives you that number so you can build prices that actually cover your costs and leave room for profit. Without it, you are guessing.

Annual budgeting and planning. At the start of each year, plug in your expected costs to see where you will land. If overhead is creeping above 50% of projected revenue, you know you need to either cut costs or grow revenue before the year gets away from you.

Evaluating growth decisions. Thinking about adding a truck, hiring a dispatcher, or increasing your ad spend? Enter the new numbers and see how they change your overhead per call and overhead percentage. This prevents surprises when the bills start rolling in after you have already committed.