Auto repair & detailing
Car Wash Break-Even Calculator
Find the vehicles per day a wash site needs to cover its fixed costs before anything is profit.
Result
Break-even, not a target. It is the point where the business stops losing money, which is a floor rather than a plan. Owner's pay only counts here if it is inside the fixed costs you entered.
Get a Free Business AuditWhat moves the number
- Fixed costs, which at a wash site include site, equipment finance and staffing whether vehicles arrive or not.
- Contribution per vehicle, which differs substantially by tier.
- Weather, which moves daily volume more than any other factor.
Where this one goes wrong
Working from an annual average daily count. Wash volume is extremely weather dependent, and a break-even that holds on the average will not hold through a wet month.
Questions
About this calculator
Should break-even be daily or monthly?
Monthly for the business, daily as an operating target. The daily figure tells staff what a normal day needs to look like.
How do memberships change break-even?
They lower the variability, which makes break-even easier to plan around even where revenue per wash falls. Predictable revenue is worth something in a weather-dependent business.
What is the biggest fixed cost at a wash?
Usually the site and the equipment finance together. Both continue regardless of volume, which is why throughput matters more here than at most service businesses.
The formula
break-even jobs = fixed costs / (average job value x gross margin%)
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How to use this calculator
- Monthly fixed costs ($). Rent, office wages, insurance, vehicle payments, software, advertising.
- Average job value ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $520.
- Gross margin per job (%). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 46%.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to jobs needed per month, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Monthly fixed costs | $21,000 |
| Average job value | $520 |
| Gross margin per job | 46% |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Jobs needed per month main result | 88 |
| Revenue needed per month | $45,760 |
| Gross profit per job | $239.20 |
| Jobs per working day | 4.0 |
You need 88 jobs a month, about 4.0 a working day, to cover $21,000 of fixed cost. That is $45,760 of revenue before the business earns anything.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only monthly fixed costs, this is what happens to jobs needed per month. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Monthly fixed costs ($) | Jobs needed per month |
|---|---|
| $10,500 | 44 |
| $15,750 | 66 |
| $21,000 example above | 88 |
| $31,500 | 132 |
| $42,000 | 176 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Monthly fixed costs ($)
- Rent, office wages, insurance, vehicle payments, software, advertising.
- Average job value ($)
- A money amount, starting at $520.
- Gross margin per job (%)
- A percentage, between 0 and 95, starting at 46%.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Jobs needed per month | The headline result. A number. |
| Revenue needed per month | A money figure. |
| Gross profit per job | A money figure. |
| Jobs per working day | A decimal figure. |
Estimating is the easy part
The jobs you never hear about cost more than the ones you mis-measure. BDEVY builds the marketing, systems and automation that bring them in.