Price chairs, sofas, seats and boat cushions from your own costs
You enter what your shop costs to keep open once. From then on, each estimate is built from your own rent, wages and fabric prices, not from a number another shop charges.
- Know what a bench hour really costs you Rent, the van, insurance on customers' furniture, your machines and every wage, yours too, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole piece, not just the cover Stripping, foam and batting, cutting, sewing, covering and any frame or refinishing work each get their own line.
- Quote per seat, per chair or per cushion You get the job total and the price for each piece, plus the price at other quantities, from the same numbers.
- Get paid for fabric picking and pattern waste The trip to see the piece, yardage lost to matching stripes, foam shipping and delivery sit on a checklist you answer before the estimate is done.
- Hand over a clean estimate A one-page customer quote with the pieces, the price, the deposit and upholstery terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- Learn which jobs paid The Job Log records every estimate, won or lost, next to the hours the work really took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns yardage, foam and bench time into an upholstery estimate
There are six tabs. You set up the shop once, update fabric and foam prices when your wholesaler does, and fill in one Quote per job.
- Start HereThe order to work in and what the colored cells mean. Most shops finish setup in one evening.
- Shop SetupRent, van, insurance, your upholsterers and your walking-foot machine, foam saw and cutting table, turned into a break-even rate per bench hour.
- Price ListFabric by the yard, foam by the square foot, batting, dust cover, welt cord and staples, each dated so an old wholesale price shows up red.
- QuoteYardage and foam per piece, minutes to strip, cut and cover, any outside frame work, the checklist, and the price at your quantity plus three others.
- Customer QuoteThe estimate the customer signs, with terms for hidden frame damage, the customer's own fabric and free pickup distance.
- Job LogQuoted hours against real hours for every chair, sofa or boat, so the next estimate is closer.
What is a break-even rate? It is the least one billable hour at the bench has to bring in to pay every wage and every shop cost, before profit. Trips to see furniture and time on the phone don't bill, so the rate has to cover them too. The true hourly rate guide walks through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up upholstery company and its $1,179 dining chair quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample shop is an owner, one upholsterer and a part-time helper who strips, with a break-even of $49.10 per bench hour. The job is 8 dining chair slip seats: strip the old covers, new 2 inch foam and batting, mid-grade fabric, new dust covers, no frame work.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Fabric, foam, supplies and bench time | $655 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $211 |
| 4 | Markup, cushion and profit | $313 |
| 5 | Price for 8 seats | $1,179.29, or $147.41 a seat |
The shop keeps $313 once the fabric, foam, overhead and all three wages are paid, and the job brings in about $77.28 per labour hour. Order only 2 seats and the same work prices at $244.33 each, because the trip and the fabric picking happen once either way. The full method is on how much to charge for upholstery work.
$211
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 4 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 per-chair price from memory goes wrong
Most upholsterers quote from a price list they carry in their head: so much for a slip seat, so much for a wing chair. It works until foam goes up, the customer brings a striped fabric, or the cover comes off and the joints are loose.
Stripping alone shows how far one number can drift. A slip seat can take 15 minutes to strip or half an hour, depending on how many old covers and staples are under it. On a set of 8, that gap is 2 hours of bench time, and at a $49.10 break-even it is about $98 of cost that a fixed per-seat price never sees.
This template builds each estimate from the piece in front of you: its yardage, its foam, its minutes. You still give the customer a per-seat or per-chair price, but it is one that covers that job.
Fabric picking, pattern waste and the other upholstery costs it catches
The Quote tab won't call an estimate finished until each of these lines has a Yes, No or N/A:
- The visit and fabric picking, including the sample books and the time a customer takes to choose.
- Measuring yardage and pattern repeat, before a short cut means a second bolt.
- Extra fabric for pattern matching, since stripes and florals waste yardage lining up.
- Shipping on foam and fabric, which is steep on bulky foam.
- Pickup and delivery, even inside your free zone: the van, padding and a driver's afternoon.
- Frame damage found after stripping. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you price it as a change order.
Exactly what you get
A single .xlsx file, downloaded the moment you pay. It opens in Microsoft Excel and in Google Sheets. One payment: no subscription, no app and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, built for furniture, auto, marine and commercial seating.
- A filled-in sample shop, with the 8-seat dining chair estimate to study before you start.
- Upholstery customer terms you can edit, covering hidden frame damage, customer-supplied fabric and pickup distance.
- A Job Log that shows which pieces 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: furniture, auto and marine upholstery shops
It fits one-person and small upholstery shops (about 1 to 15 people) doing furniture, auto, marine or commercial seating, and upholsterers who quote per piece and want to know what that number covers per bench hour. A single footstool or a boat with 14 cushions, working alone or with a stripper and two sewers, it works the same way, because every rate and price in it is yours.
It is not for upholstery cleaning companies, whose pricing and costs are different, or for homeowners looking up what a sofa should cost. To check your rate before buying, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop quoting from a price list you carry in your head. Price every seat, chair and cushion from your own costs, catch the trips and yardage that usually get missed, and see which jobs made money.
Upholstery Shop Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets