Price railings, gates and short runs from your own shop costs
You enter what your fab shop costs to keep open once, and every job after that is priced from it instead of from a rate you heard.
- Know what a shop hour really costs you Rent, insurance, the truck, your welders and saws, and wages, yours included, turn into one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole job, not just the steel Cutting, jig building, tack and fit, weld out, grinding and powder coat each get their own line.
- Quote the order and the piece You get the order total and the price per panel or part, at your main quantity and three others.
- Stop paying for trips out of your own pocket Site checks, steel runs and powder coater drives sit on a checklist that must be answered before the quote is done.
- Send a clean quote the same day A one-page customer quote with price each, order total, deposit and your terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which jobs made you money The Job Log keeps every quote, won or lost, and the hours each job really took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns steel, shop steps and powder coat into a railing quote
There are six tabs. You set up the shop once, update steel and gas prices when your supplier changes them, and build one quote per job.
- Start HereWhat to fill in first. Plan on one evening.
- Shop SetupOverhead, people and equipment such as MIG and TIG welders, a plasma table, a cold saw, a press brake and a mobile rig, turned into your break-even rate and each machine's cost per running hour.
- Price ListTube, bar, post pipe, caps, hinges, latches, wire and gas at your supplier's prices, each with the date you checked it.
- QuotePick the steel per piece, enter setup hours and minutes per piece for each shop step, add outside work like powder coat or galvanizing, answer the checklist, and get the price at four quantities.
- Customer QuoteThe page your customer sees: price each, order total, deposit and terms.
- Job LogOnce the job ships, the real hours go in, so you can see if it paid.
What is a break-even shop rate? It is what each billable hour in your shop has to bring in to pay every wage, yours included, and every bill, before any profit. Only the part of your price above it is profit. The true hourly rate guide walks through how it is worked out.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up fab shop and its $4,395 railing quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample shop is an owner, one welder/fabricator and a part-time helper, with a break-even of $63.33 per billable hour. Its quote is 8 deck railing panels, 6 ft each, with square tube pickets and rails, bolt-down posts and black powder coat, built in the shop and not installed.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Steel, shop time and powder coat | $2,852.67 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $520.33 |
| 4 | Markups, cushion and profit | $1,022.26 |
| 5 | Price for the order of 8 | $4,395.26 |
That is $549.41 a panel. The job takes about 24.4 hours and earns about $106 for each one, against the $63.33 it needs to break even. One panel on its own would be $1,384.38, and 16 would be $489.77 each, because the site visit, the drawing and the jig cost the same however many you build. The full walk-through is on how to charge for welding jobs.
$520
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 10 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 borrowing another welder's hourly rate loses money
A lot of welders set their rate by asking what the shop down the road charges. That number was built on someone else's rent, rig and helper, and it says nothing about how many of your own hours never get billed.
Take the sample shop. If it charged a round $65 an hour because that sounded normal, it would clear only $1.67 over its $63.33 break-even. On the 24.4-hour railing job, that is about $41 of profit, and one unpaid trip back to refit a gate would wipe it out.
The calculator starts from your own break-even rate, prices each step and each trip, and only then shows the price per panel. You still get a per-piece number for the customer, and you know what it covers.
Site checks, steel runs, powder coat trips and the other fab costs it catches
The Quote tab won't call a quote finished until each line has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Site check, including level and grade, so gates and posts fit the ground they go on and don't come back for refitting you can't bill.
- A drawing and cut list for sign-off, which also settles what was agreed.
- Working out the steel, ordering it and fetching it, the hour that never makes it onto the invoice.
- Gas, tips, discs and blade wear, small on one job and a real number over a year.
- Spare steel for bad cuts and stick drop.
- Round trips to the powder coater, loading, driving and picking up.
- The install trip. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays up and the customer quote says install is priced separately.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet file, sent as an instant download the moment you pay. It opens in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. No subscription, no app and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your shop's numbers.
- A complete sample fab shop, with a finished 8-panel railing quote to study before you start.
- Fab customer terms you can edit, covering the deposit before steel is bought, install as its own line, and "while you're here" extras written up as a change order.
- A Job Log that compares quoted and real hours and shows your win rate, the habit explained 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: welders and fab shops of 1 to 15 people
It fits one-person and small fab shops, roughly 1 to 15 people, building railings, gates, brackets, trailer repairs and short production runs, and mobile welders who want a rate built from their own rig. Solo in a garage or a crew with a press brake, one gate or a run of 100 brackets, it works the same way, because every rate, price and hour in it is yours.
It is not for large structural shops bidding steel by the ton with estimating software, shops already doing job costing in an ERP, or anyone who just wants a free blank form. To check your rate before you buy, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing fab work off another welder's hourly rate. Price railings, gates and short runs from your own costs, catch the trips and consumables that slip past, and see which jobs made money.
Welding & Fabrication Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets