How to Price Roofing Jobs: The Full Build-Up, Line by Line

How do you price a roofing job? The build-up formula

Add three costs and divide by one minus your margin: the materials list, the crew's hours at their loaded wage, and overhead for those same hours.

1. Materials = every line of the order, rounded up to whole bundles, rolls and pieces, plus dumpster and permit.
2. Labour = crew hours x wage x (1 + burden %).
3. Overhead = crew hours x (yearly overhead / sellable crew hours).
4. Price = (materials + labour + overhead) / (1 - margin).

I build pricing maths; I do not install roofs. Every square, hour, wage and unit price on this page is an assumption for one four-person crew.

Crew hours for 30 squares: 30 x 0.9 + 30 x 1.5 + 8 = 80. Overhead per crew hour: $60,800 / (4 people x 190 days x 8 hours = 6,080 hours) = $10. The labor burden calculator guide builds the burden percentage line by line.

Roofing estimate calculator: price the whole job

Enter hours per person, crew size, wage, burden, the materials total, overhead and margin. It opens on the 30-square example and shows $13,470.56.

Hours: 80 crew hours / 4 people = 20 each. Materials: the $5,918.00 total from the list in the next section.

Check it: 80 crew hours x $37.26 = $2,980.80 of labour. Overhead is 80 x $10.00 = $800.00. With $5,918.00 of materials, break-even is $9,698.80. Divided by 0.72, the price is $13,470.56, or $449.02 a square.

The roofing materials list: from measured squares to whole bundles

Start from measured squares, add a waste factor, then round every line up to what the supplier sells. The example roof measures 30 squares with 160 ft of eave, 120 ft of rake and 80 ft of ridge.

The rounding matters. A 12% waste factor turns 30 squares into 33.6, which is 100.8 bundles at an assumed 3 bundles per square. You cannot buy 0.8 of a bundle, so the order is 101. Read the real coverage off the wrapper: it varies by product.

Dumpster and permit sit in materials because they are bought for this job. No unit price above is a supplier's quote. For measuring squares and for laying out the written estimate, see the roofing estimate guide.

What each share of the price is, and why materials x 2 misprices a cut-up roof

On the example, materials are 43.9% of the price, labour 22.1%, overhead 5.9% and profit 28.0%. Those shares move with the roof, so a shortcut tuned to one roof fails on the next.

Take the same 30 squares on a cut-up roof. Assumed: waste rises to 17%, install hours are multiplied by 1.4, ridge and hip run 140 ft, and flashing needs a $310 allowance.

Materials x 2 only sees the extra shingles. It misses most of the added hours, so on the cut-up roof it comes in $2,532.50 under the build-up. The flat per-square number is $1,825.94 short on the same roof. The roofing labor price per square guide has the pitch and storey factors for the labour side; replace my single multiplier with yours.

How much do roofers charge per hour? The rate that falls out of the job

A roofing crew's hourly charge is an output of the job price, and it is far above the wage. On these assumptions one crew hour costs $37.26 + $10 = $47.26 and sells at $65.64 before materials.

Use the first row for time-and-materials work: bill $65.64 per person per hour and add materials at your margin. The last row is what the crew must bring in on a day with no materials on the invoice. The gap between $27 and $65.64 is burden, overhead and profit. I quote no market rate: your wage, insurance and billable days set yours.

Price per square by job size, and a minimum for repairs

Price per square falls as the roof gets bigger, because 8 crew hours of set-up, a dumpster and a permit are bought once. Those fixed lines alone price at $1,497.33.

Edge lengths are scaled by the square root of the area: a roof with four times the area has about twice the eave. At 40 squares a second dumpster arrives, which is why the per-square price stops falling so fast. Quote $449.02 a square on the 10-square roof and you bill $4,490.20 against a break-even of $4,313.32.

Repair minimum. Price a small repair as people and hours, door to door. Assumed: 2 people for 3 hours and $85 of materials breaks even at $368.56 and prices at $511.89. That is the floor for any call-out.

Rotten decking and other change orders: agree a unit price before the tear-off

You cannot see the deck until the shingles are off, so price replacement decking per sheet and print that unit price on the quote.

Run one sheet through the same formula. Assumed: a sheet costs $34 and takes 25 crew minutes to cut out and nail down. Break-even is 25 / 60 x $47.26 + $34 = $53.69, and the unit price is $74.57 a sheet. Five sheets add $372.85.

Write the line as a rate and a trigger: the price per sheet, who decides a sheet is rotten, and that the count is photographed and signed for before the new sheets go down. A second layer of shingles found under the first is priced the same way: minutes plus materials, divided by one minus the margin, agreed in advance.

Deposit and progress payments: the cash-flow arithmetic

The deposit question is whether it covers what you pay out before the tear-off. On the example the supplier delivery is $5,218 and the permit $180: $5,398 out of pocket before day one.

The second row is real law in one state. California's Contractors State License Board says the down payment on a home improvement job "cannot be more than $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less", and that later payments "cannot exceed the value of the work performed". Ten percent of the example would be $1,347.06, so the $1,000 cap applies.

Other states set different rules or none. Check your state contractor board before you print a deposit percentage on a quote; this is arithmetic, not legal advice. Where the deposit is capped, ask for a progress payment when materials are delivered, where your state allows one.

Fall protection, permit and licence time in the bid

Safety set-up is crew hours, and crew hours are priced. The rule that creates them, in OSHA's words:

Each employee engaged in residential construction activities 6 feet (1.8 m) or more above lower levels shall be protected by guardrail systems, safety net system, or personal fall arrest system unless another provision in paragraph (b) of this section provides for an alternative fall protection measure.

That is 29 CFR 1926.501(b)(13). The 8 fixed crew hours in my example include setting anchors and putting on harnesses; time your own crew and change the number.

Training is the other cost. 29 CFR 1926.503 says the employer "shall provide a training program for each employee who might be exposed to fall hazards". A training day is paid but not billed, so it comes out of billable days. Lower the 190 days in the calculator by your training days and overhead per hour rises.

If you work alone, your own pay is the wage input, and the IRS puts the self-employment tax rate at 15.3%, which belongs in your burden figure. Permit fees and licence rules are local: ask the building department and the state licensing board. I give no figures for either.

Excel formulas for a roofing price sheet, the markup mistake, and where to keep it

Layout: inputs in column B, one per row, as each formula's note lists them.

The mistake: adding 28% to break-even where you should divide. On the example that bills $12,414.46 and keeps 21.88% of the price. It is $1,056.09 short per roof, $109,833.52 a year at 2 roofs a week. The markup vs margin calculator guide has the conversion chart.

Neither free tool rounds bundles or holds a materials list: total the list yourself, as above, and type the total in. Put on your price sheet: the materials lines with coverage and unit price, hours per square for tear-off and install, fixed hours per job, the decking unit price, the repair minimum and your deposit terms.

Step-by-step: How to Price Roofing Jobs: The Full Build-Up, Line by Line

1. Measure and add waste. Measured squares x (1 + waste %) gives ordered squares; multiply by bundles per square and round up.
2. Total the materials list. Round every line up to whole bundles, rolls and pieces, then add dumpster and permit.
3. Count crew hours. Squares x tear-off hours + squares x install hours + fixed set-up and clean-up hours per job.
4. Find break-even. Materials + crew hours x (wage x (1 + burden %) + yearly overhead / sellable crew hours).
5. Apply margin by dividing. Break-even / (1 - margin); for 28%, divide by 0.72.

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