Price privacy fences, gates and tear-outs from your own costs
You put in what your fence business costs to run once. After that, every fence is priced from your own posts, pickets and crew hours, not from the per-foot number another company charges.
- Know what a crew hour really costs Your yard, truck, insurance, auger and every wage, yours too, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole fence, not just the pickets Tear-out, post holes, setting posts, rails, pickets and the gate each get their own crew hours.
- Still quote by the foot You get the job total and the price per foot from the same numbers.
- Stop paying for the second trip The measure visit, the trip back after the concrete cures, the whole crew's drive and the dump run sit on a checklist that has to be answered.
- Send a fence quote that looks professional A one-page customer quote with scope, price, deposit and fence terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which fences made money The Job Log puts quoted hours next to real hours on every job, won or lost.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns posts, pickets and crew hours into a fence quote
Six tabs. You set up the business once, keep lumber prices current, and build one quote per fence.
- Start HereHow to set it up once, then the order to fill in each new fence quote.
- Shop SetupYour yard, trucks, insurance, crew and auger go in; what one crew hour really costs comes out.
- Price ListYour own posts, bags of concrete, rails, pickets and gate hinges and latch at your lumber yard's prices, each dated so an old price gets flagged.
- QuotePick materials, add crew hours for tear-out, posts, rails, pickets and the gate, add dump fees and the permit, and it builds the price and the price per foot.
- Customer QuoteThe page your customer signs: scope, price, tax, deposit and fence terms.
- Job LogQuoted vs actual hours and profit on every fence, so you see which styles and job sizes make money.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one billable crew hour has to bring in to pay the wages and every cost of running the business, before profit. The owner's hours spent measuring, calling in locates and loading lumber are not billed, so the installing hours carry them. The fencing hourly rate page works it through.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up fence company and its $8,201 cedar privacy quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example company is an owner who also measures and quotes plus two installers, with about $41,000 a year of overhead and a break-even of $55.27 per billable hour. The job tears out and replaces 150 ft of 6 ft wood privacy fence: treated posts 2 ft deep in concrete, 2x4 rails, cedar pickets screwed on, one 4 ft walk gate, old fence hauled away.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Materials with waste | $2,547.19 |
| 3 | Labour and equipment (about 46 crew hours) | $2,747.67 |
| 4 | Dump fee and permit | $195.00 |
| 5 | Easy-to-miss costs | $467.19 |
| 6 | Markup, cushion and profit | $2,244.13 |
| 7 | Price before tax | $8,201.18 |
That's about $54.70 a foot, and $96.83 earned per labour hour after the owner and both installers are paid a wage. The step-by-step version is in how much to charge for a fence job.
$467
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 9 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why the per-foot fence price from down the road doesn't fit your crew
Most fences are sold by the foot, and a lot of per-foot numbers get copied from another fence company or a homeowner's other quote. Their number was built on their yard, their trucks, their crew and their overhead. Yours are different, so their price per foot can be a loss for you.
Short fences show it fastest. The sample Job Log has a $4,300 fence quoted at 30 crew hours that took 49. At the example's $55.27 break-even, those 19 hours over the quote cost $1,050.13, and a fence priced to make $700 lost $288.42 instead. A short run still needs the measure visit, the trip back after the concrete cures and the dump run, and those don't shrink with the footage.
That is why this calculator lists every post, bag of concrete, crew hour and dump fee first, adds markup and profit, and lets the per-foot price fall out of the math. You still give the customer a price per foot, but it is one that covers that fence.
The trip back after the concrete cures and the other fence costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each line has a Yes, No or N/A:
- The measure visit and the property line check, time spent on every fence, won or lost.
- The trip back after the concrete cures. Posts one day, rails and pickets on another, so the crew drives out twice.
- The whole crew in the truck, paid for the drive, both ways, every day of the job.
- Lumber yard runs and loading, before a single hole is dug.
- Hauling off the old fence: the dump run, and the fee at the transfer station.
- Hard holes. Rock, old footings and roots. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you price it or write it as a per-hole change order.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet file, available to download the moment you check out. It opens in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, with no macros, no subscription and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your own crew and lumber prices.
- A complete example fence company, with a finished 150 ft cedar privacy quote you can check line by line.
- Fence customer terms you can edit, covering added gates, hard digging, property lines, the concrete cure and haul-away, with surprises handled as a change order.
- A Job Log that shows your win rate and which fences ran over their hours, the habit covered in job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: fence crews of 1 to 15 people
It fits fence owners and small crews who quote residential or farm fence and want to know their real hourly rate, their price per foot and whether each job made money. One truck and an auger or three crews running all season, short picket runs or long farm fence, it works the same, because every rate and price in it comes from your own business.
It is not for homeowners checking what a fence should cost, or large fence companies already running estimating software tied to a CRM. To check your rate first, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing fences from the per-foot number down the road. Price every fence from your own posts, pickets and crew hours, catch the trips and dump runs that usually get missed, and see which jobs made money.
Fence Contractor Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
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