Salon, spa & fitness
Personal Trainer Pricing Calculator
Prices personal training, where the hours you can actually sell are limited.
Result
Overhead and margin are taken as shares of the selling price, which is why the cost is divided rather than multiplied. Adding 15% to cost does not produce a 15% margin. Gross profit is what is left after the cost of doing the job. Overhead comes out of that: the building, the office wages, the vans, insurance, software and advertising. A healthy gross margin still loses money if overhead is larger.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Target income plus business costs divided by the sessions realistically deliverable, giving a session price. The constraint is that trainable hours are concentrated into early mornings, evenings and weekends when clients are available, which is a far smaller window than a working day.
What moves the number
- Sessions realistically deliverable in the available window.
- Business costs including facility fees or rent.
- Target income and the tax that comes out of it.
- Travel between clients where sessions are mobile.
Where this one goes wrong
Pricing from a full working day of sessions produces a rate that cannot support the trainer, because clients want the same handful of hours and those hours are the whole business. Count the sellable window honestly. Where a facility takes a share or charges rent, that comes off before anything, and a trainer working inside a gym on a revenue split has a materially different cost base from one renting space or training in clients' homes.
Before you quote
- Count sellable hours in the window clients actually want.
- Deduct facility fees or revenue splits before income.
- Include travel time for mobile sessions.
Questions
About this calculator
Why can I not price from a full day of sessions?
Because clients want early mornings, evenings and weekends, and those hours are the whole sellable window. Pricing from a notional full working day produces a rate that cannot support the trainer once reality sets the schedule.
How do facility arrangements affect pricing?
Substantially. A revenue split with a gym, a rent for space and training in clients' homes are three different cost bases, and a rate that works under one can be unviable under another. The arrangement comes off the top before anything.
Should travel be priced?
For mobile training, yes, because it consumes the same scarce window as a session. A trainer travelling thirty minutes between clients has lost a sellable slot, and pricing that reflects it rather than absorbing it is the difference between viable and busy.
The formula
price = direct cost / (1 - overhead% - margin%)
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How to use this calculator
- Labour cost ($). Burdened: wages plus tax, insurance and the vehicle, not the hourly wage.
- Materials cost ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $11.
- Other direct costs ($). Permits, disposal, equipment hire, subcontractors.
- Overhead rate (%). Overhead as a share of revenue. Work it out from last year's accounts.
- Target net margin (%). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 15%.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to price to quote, 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 |
|---|---|
| Labour cost | $34 |
| Materials cost | $11 |
| Other direct costs | $0 |
| Overhead rate | 22% |
| Target net margin | 15% |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Price to quote main result | $71.43 |
| Direct cost | $45 |
| Overhead recovered | $15.71 |
| Net profit | $10.71 |
| Gross margin | 37.0% |
| Markup on direct cost | 58.7% |
Quote $71.43 to cover $45 of direct cost, recover $15.71 of overhead and leave $10.71 of net profit. That is a 58.7% markup on cost.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only labour cost, this is what happens to price to quote. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Labour cost ($) | Price to quote |
|---|---|
| $17 | $44.44 |
| $26 | $58.73 |
| $34 example above | $71.43 |
| $51 | $98.41 |
| $68 | $125.40 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Labour cost ($)
- Burdened: wages plus tax, insurance and the vehicle, not the hourly wage.
- Materials cost ($)
- A money amount, starting at $11.
- Other direct costs ($)
- Permits, disposal, equipment hire, subcontractors.
- Overhead rate (%)
- Overhead as a share of revenue. Work it out from last year's accounts.
- Target net margin (%)
- A percentage, between 0 and 80, starting at 15%.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Price to quote | The headline result. A money figure. |
| Direct cost | A money figure. |
| Overhead recovered | A money figure. |
| Net profit | A money figure. |
| Gross margin | A percentage. |
| Markup on direct cost | A percentage. |
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.