Price brackets, wheel sets and batch orders from your own shop costs
You enter what your coating shop costs to run once, and every rack after that is priced from those numbers.
- Know what an hour in your shop really costs Rent, gas for the oven, insurance and every wage, yours included, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price every step, not just the powder Degrease, blast, hang, outgas, spray, cure and unrack each get their own minutes and their own equipment rate.
- Quote per part and per order The customer sees the price each and the order total, at your main quantity and three others.
- Stop eating the small stuff Colour changes, masked threads and the cold oven sit on a checklist that has to be answered before the quote is ready.
- Hand over a clean quote A one-page customer quote with price breaks, deposit and your coating terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which racks made money The Job Log keeps every quote, won or lost, and the real hours each job took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns powder, prep minutes and oven time into a price per part
The file has six tabs. You set up the shop once, update powder prices when your supplier changes them, and make one quote per job.
- Start HereWhat each cell colour means and what to fill in first. Plan on one evening.
- Shop SetupYour yearly costs and crew, turned into a break-even rate, plus a running cost per hour for the wash station, blast cabinet, booth and oven.
- Price ListPowders by the pound, blast media, degreaser, plugs, tape, hooks and wrap, each with the date you last checked the price.
- QuoteList the powder and supplies per part, the setup and minutes for each step, freight or outside work, and the checklist, and it prices the order at four quantities.
- Customer QuoteThe page your customer sees: the job, price each and order total at each quantity, deposit and terms.
- Job LogAfter the parts go out, the real hours go in, so you know whether the job paid.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one billable hour in the shop has to bring in to cover wages, rent, gas and every other running cost, before any profit. The oven and booth then add their own cost per running hour on top. The true hourly rate guide walks through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up powder coating shop and its $2,043 bracket quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example shop is a batch-oven shop with an owner and two crew, and a break-even of $51.00 per billable hour. Its sample quote is 100 steel mounting brackets, about 12 by 6 inches, blasted, outgassed and coated satin black, with two holes masked on each and a pallet shipped back by freight.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Powder, prep supplies, labour, equipment and freight | $1,151 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $336 |
| 4 | Markups, cushion and profit | $556 |
| 5 | Price for 100 brackets | $2,043 |
That is $20.43 a bracket. The same quote prices 25 at $32.88 each and 500 at $17.11 each, because the oven heat-up, the colour change and the freight land once on whatever quantity is ordered. The $556 is kept after every cost, the owner's wage included, and the job earns about $82 per labour hour. The full walk-through is on how much to charge for powder coating.
$336
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 6 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 a price said at the counter comes in too low
Most coaters quote a walk-in part out loud, from memory, before anyone has timed it. One owner who timed a small part step by step got $50.08, where his counter guess would have been about $30.
The gap comes from the steps that don't feel like coating. Say the oven takes a quarter hour to come up to heat and the colour change takes another quarter hour. At a $51 break-even that is about $25 of cost before the first part goes in. On a rack of 100 it adds a quarter to each part. On a single part it is the whole guess.
The Quote tab puts those once-per-job minutes in their own column, so it spreads them over the order and shows you what a small job has to cost. The minimum charge then catches the jobs too small to cover the oven.
Colour changes, plugged threads and the other coating costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each of these has a Yes, No or N/A:
- The colour change: emptying the hopper, cleaning the gun and blowing down the booth.
- Masking threads and machined surfaces, plug by plug, part by part.
- Heating the oven for the first load, the gas and the wait that a single part pays for alone.
- A test panel so the customer approves the colour before the run.
- Stripping baked-on powder off hooks and racks, so the next parts ground properly.
- The pickup or delivery trip. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you decide what a trip costs you.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet file, sent as an instant download as soon as you check out. It opens in Microsoft Excel and uploads to Google Sheets with no macros. No subscription, no app and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your own shop numbers.
- A complete example coating shop, with the 100-bracket order finished so you can follow every number.
- Powder coating customer terms you can edit, covering extra colours, masking, castings that bubble and colour matching, and a line that sends added work to a signed change order.
- A Job Log that shows your win rate and which jobs 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: batch-oven coating shops of 1 to 15 people
It fits owner-operators and small shops coating wheels, brackets, signs, railings and fabricated parts in a batch oven, from a one-person garage shop to a crew of 15. Whether your week is single wheel sets or runs of 500 parts for a fabricator, it works the same way, because the minutes, powder and rates are all yours.
It is not for large lines with conveyor ovens and costing software already in place, hobbyists coating their own parts in a kitchen oven, or anyone after a blank fill-in form. To see your shop rate before buying, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop guessing prices at the counter. Price every part from your own powder, oven and crew costs, catch the colour changes and masking that get missed, and see which jobs made money.
Powder Coating Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets