Know your real hourly rate
before you quote.
Most trade businesses guess their charge-out rates and quietly lose money on every job that guess is wrong. The Platinum Overhead Calculator works out exactly what every chargeable hour must earn to cover wages, on-costs and overheads, then pushes the answer straight into Simpro.
Real numbers. Real charts.
No spreadsheet archaeology.
Watch how a trade business sets its first verified charge-out rate in minutes.
Pay, super, leave, insurances and overhead squeezed into a single defensible number you can take into any meeting.
A guided Easy Start walks you through it. Pull your team from Simpro and your P&L from Xero and you are done before the next job.
Simpro rollouts by Platinum Consultants, the Simpro specialists since 2008, battle-tested across electrical, HVAC, plumbing, fire and every trade in between.
Where each charged hour really goes
A $76.36/hr tradesperson. Three segments. Every cent that has to come in before you make a dollar of profit.
If your rate is out by even $2/hr, a 5-person crew leaves approximately $19,000 a year on the table. The calculator pays for itself the first time it corrects your number.
In the Box
Every subscription includes the full toolkit. No feature tiers, no locked-away modules.
A tool that earns its keep
every single day
From first-rate setup to monthly repricing, the calculator covers every number your trade business runs on.
Easy Start — guided setup
Answer plain-language questions and the calculator builds everything for you: company costs, your crew, their hours. First rate in minutes, with friendly help on every field and a guided tour of the app.
Your whole crew, properly costed
A fast spreadsheet-style grid for pay, hours, super, payroll tax, workers comp, leave, RDOs and TAFE days, plus ten allowance types (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). Every edit saves automatically.
Overheads & asset replacement
Start from your P&L total, strip out what is already counted (field wages, super), and set aside the true yearly cost of replacing utes, tools and IT. Trade-in values and multi-company splits included.
Results that argue for themselves
Your company overhead $/hr, per-employee true cost, and a "where each charged hour goes" chart splitting pay, on-costs and overhead per labour type, so everyone can see why the rate is the rate.
Charge-out rate advisor
Stop guessing your sell rates. Tell it the gross margin you want to make and it hands you the charge-out rate for every labour type: ex GST, inc GST, and the profit each charged hour actually banks.
What-if planner with charts
Model hires, including cloning an existing employee's exact hours and entitlements. Pull the productivity lever, cost a vehicle into every field hire, and see it all charted including what happens if you keep hiring.
Rear-view mirror
Pulls your last three months of Simpro job hours and asks: what if the rate had been higher? Slide the uplift and see the gross profit those exact jobs would have added. Same jobs, same techs, better margin.
Anonymous industry benchmarking
See where your overhead sits against similar businesses: percentiles, industry medians, same-size peers and a distribution chart with your position marked. Anonymous by design, coarse buckets only, no names, no ABN.
Snapshots & trend
Watch your rate improve over time. Every snapshot saves your whole setup and plots your trending costs, overheads and more. Compare any two, restore in one click, and take the credit at the next management meeting.
Branded PDF reports
The easy way to present your numbers at any meeting. One click turns your live numbers into a clean, branded PDF: charts, build-up and per-employee costs included. No screenshots, no copy-paste.
Simpro two-way sync
Pull your staff and timesheet analysis directly into the calculator. Then, once you have calculated your overhead, push it straight back: updating all your employees and labour rates, plus your company default overhead. Sign in with Simpro or an API key.
Xero P&L, CSV & Excel
Pull your expenses straight into the calculator and add, remove and adjust them to fit your changing business. Tag your vehicle lines so the What-if planner knows what a ute really costs. Your data is always yours: Excel or CSV export anytime.
Multiple companies, one login
One workspace included; add more anytime, billed to your existing card in one click. Search, rename and manage dozens of entities from one account. Team seats included.
A consultant on tap
Book a 1.5-hour session to have your numbers sanity-checked live, or a half-day covering all your Simpro questions, optimisation and training. Booked and paid in a couple of clicks, right inside the app.
Private, friendly & a little bit quirky
Your data is never visible to anyone else. Platinum can only look if you switch on access (off by default, revocable anytime, audit-logged). Light and dark themes on any device, a guided tour, rotating tips and helpers on every tricky field mean your team actually uses it.
Up and running in three steps
Your number is closer than you think.
Subscribe online
About a cuppa's worth of setup. Secure card checkout and signed in immediately, no installation required.
Follow Easy Start
Connect Simpro and Xero or type it in. On PLUS, our consultant checks it with you live and sets your first verified rate together.
Quote with confidence
Push your true rates into Simpro and price every job knowing your number is right. No more guessing.
Want your first number expert-verified? Choose a PLUS plan and your onboarding includes a live 1.5-hour session with the consultants behind 1200+ Simpro rollouts. Inputs sanity-checked, target charge-out rates set together, and the Simpro push done with you. Your very first quote is built on a verified number.
The questions it finally answers
Four numbers every trade business owner needs. Most are guessing at least one of them right now.
"What does each tech actually cost me?"
Pay is the small half. Super, leave, public holidays, lost hours and overhead can add $30 to $45/hr on top, and now every one of them is on the page, per person, broken out so you can see exactly where the number comes from.
"What should I be charging?"
Pick the gross margin you want and the advisor hands you the sell rate per labour type: ex GST, inc GST, and the profit each charged hour banks. Your true cost in, a confident price out.
"Can I afford to hire?"
Model two apprentices and a tradie, vehicles included, and watch the overhead rate move before you sign anything. Then keep going: x2, x3, x4 hires, all charted. Know the answer before the conversation.
"Did last quarter make what it should have?"
The rear-view mirror reprices your last three months of Simpro job hours at a higher rate and shows the profit you left on the table. Same jobs, same techs, better margin, there to see in black and orange.
See your real number today.
Platinum Consultants, the Simpro specialists since 2008. 1200+ rollouts, 3000+ businesses helped. The calculator pays for itself the first time it corrects your rate.