Price basements, remodels and patches from your own costs
You set up your drywall shop once: overhead, hangers, tapers and tools. After that, every bid starts from your sheet counts and crew hours instead of a per-foot number heard at the supply yard.
- Know what an hour of hanging and taping really costs Insurance, the truck, the lift, the sander and every wage, yours too, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole job, not just the board Hanging, taping, each coat, sanding, corners and clean-up get their own hours next to the board, mud and bead.
- Still quote by the board foot You get the job total, the price per board foot and the price per sheet from the same numbers.
- Get paid for the trips and the extras A drive for every coat, the dump run, bad prep and the sheets you didn't count sit on a checklist that has to be answered.
- Send a clean drywall bid A one-page customer quote with scope, the ceiling heights you priced, deposit and drywall terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which bids made money The Job Log puts bid 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 sheet counts and crew hours into a drywall bid
Six tabs, set up once and then used one bid at a time.
- Start HereThe order to fill things in, so a drywall shop can set it up in one evening.
- Shop SetupYour overhead, your hangers and tapers (and you), your lift, stilts and sander, turned into one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price ListThe board types, mud, tape, bead and screws you buy, each dated so an old supplier price gets flagged.
- QuoteSheet counts by type, crew hours from hang to sand, delivery and stocking, and the forgotten-cost list, giving the price and the price per board foot.
- Customer QuoteThe page the customer signs: scope, heights priced, price, deposit and terms.
- Job LogEvery bid, won or lost, and how the real hours compared with the bid.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one billable hour has to bring in to pay every wage and every shop cost before profit. The owner's hours spent measuring, doing takeoffs and driving between coats are not billed, so the hanging and taping hours carry them. The true hourly rate guide explains the math.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up drywall company and its $9,015 basement quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The example shop is an owner who estimates plus one hanger and one taper, with a break-even of $60.30 per billable hour. The job is a basement finish, walls and ceilings, square metal corners, smooth and ready for paint: 74 sheets, or 3,488 board feet.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Materials, with waste | $1,990.80 |
| 3 | Labour and equipment | $4,276.88 |
| 4 | Delivery and stocking | $175.00 |
| 5 | Easy-to-miss costs | $888.63 |
| 6 | Markups, safety cushion and profit | $1,683.41 |
| 7 | Price before tax | $9,014.72 |
That is about $2.58 a board foot, or about $122 a sheet hung, taped and finished, and the job earns about $81.88 for each of its roughly 78 labour hours. Every step of that price is walked through in how much to charge for drywall.
$889
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 17 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 going rate per board foot loses money on drywall
Per-foot going rates come from big open houses hung by footage crews. They fall apart on basements, remodels and patches, where the same number of sheets takes more trips, more cutting and more corners. And they fall apart completely when the walls turn out taller than the plans said.
The sample Job Log shows it. One $14,200 builder job was bid at 120 hours and took 162. At the example's $60.30 break-even, those 42 hours over the bid cost $2,532.60, and a job priced to make $1,500 lost $669.02 instead.
The calculator starts from your sheet counts and hours, then shows the per-foot price as a check, not the other way round. A minimum charge covers the patch that takes an hour plus a trip back to sand, so small jobs never get a per-foot price.
Stairwell sheets, mud buckets and the other drywall costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a bid ready until each line has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Measuring real wall heights before quoting, because an 8 ft wall on the plans can be 9 or 10 ft on site.
- A drive for every stage: hang day, three coats and a sand add up to a lot of trips.
- Floor paper and masking before the first sheet goes up.
- Scrap and the dump run, including the fee at the gate, and the whole buckets of mud and boxes of screws the job really uses.
- Bad prep and spare sheets: missing backing, bad framing, and the stairwell or closet you didn't count.
- Touch-ups after the painter and other trades. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you set your own number.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet file, downloaded the moment you pay. It opens in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, with no macros, no subscription and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your own shop numbers.
- A complete example drywall company, with a finished basement bid you can check line by line.
- Drywall customer terms you can edit: who supplies the board, framing and backing ready before you start, exclusions like reveals and niches, and taller walls than the plans as a written change order.
- A Job Log that shows bid hours against real hours, the job costing habit that makes the next bid better.
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: hang-and-tape shops of 1 to 15
It fits drywall owners and small crews who hang, tape and finish for homeowners, remodelers and small builders, including patch and repair specialists who need a minimum charge they can defend. One person doing patches out of a van or a crew hanging whole houses, it works the same way, because the counts, hours and rates are yours.
It is not for commercial outfits running bid software with plan takeoffs and union rates, or for homeowners checking what drywall should cost. To see your break-even rate first, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing drywall from a going rate per foot. Price every basement, remodel and patch from your own sheet counts and crew hours, catch the trips and extra sheets that usually get missed, and see which jobs made money.
Drywall Contractor Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets