Price coasters, tumblers and logo orders from your own costs
You tell it once what your shop and your lasers cost to run. From then on, every order is priced from your numbers instead of a listing you saw online.
- Know what an hour of your time really costs Home-shop rent, insurance, power and wages, yours included, turn into one break-even rate per hour of paid work.
- Price the whole order, not just the burn Blanks, loading and boxing, laser time, supplier freight and logo setup each get their own line.
- Quote per piece or per set, at four quantities One quote gives the order total and the price each at the quantity asked for, plus three more, so "what about 100?" already has an answer.
- Stop giving away setup and shipping Logo prep, test blanks, the jig and postage sit on a checklist that has to be answered before the quote is ready.
- Send a business buyer a real quote A one-page customer quote with the price-per-set table, proof approval and your terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- See which orders made money The Job Log keeps every quote, won or lost, and the real hours each order took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns blanks, laser minutes and setup into a price per set
The file has six tabs. You set up the shop once, update blank prices when your supplier changes them, and build one quote per order.
- Start HereWhat to fill in first and how the sample coaster order was built. Setup takes an evening.
- Shop SetupYour overhead, you and any helper, and each machine (CO2, fiber, diode, rotary), turned into a break-even rate and a cost for every hour each laser runs.
- Price ListYour slate, tumblers, plywood, acrylic and gift boxes, each price dated so a stale slate price shows up red.
- QuotePick the blanks, time one piece through loading, engraving and boxing, answer the checklist, and it prices the order at four quantities.
- Customer QuoteThe page the buyer sees: the price per set at each quantity, proof approval, deposit and terms.
- Job LogWhen the order ships, the real hours go in, so you know whether it paid.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one hour of paid laser work has to bring in to cover your wages and the rest of the shop's costs, before the laser itself and before profit. The hours spent answering proof emails and ordering slate are not paid hours, so the rate has to carry them. The true hourly rate guide walks through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up laser shop and its $1,389 coaster order, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The shop is an owner and a part-time packer with four machines and a break-even of $63.07 per billable hour. The order is 50 closing-gift sets for a credit union: four slate coasters per set, the logo engraved on each, every set in a gift box.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 coaster sets | Amount |
| 2 | Blanks, gift boxes and freight | $384.45 |
| 3 | Labour and laser time | $346.09 |
| 4 | Easy-to-miss setup and extras | $284.10 |
| 5 | Markup, cushion and profit | $374.74 |
| 6 | Price for 50 sets | $1,389.38 |
That is $27.79 a set. The $374.74 is what the shop keeps after every cost, the owner's wage included, and the work pays about $107.61 per labour hour. The same quote prices 10 sets at $59.61 each and 100 at $23.81, because the logo setup lands on whatever quantity is ordered. Every line is walked through on how much to charge for laser engraving.
$284
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 5 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-minute laser price misses most of the job
A lot of laser pricing starts from a per-minute rate or a price on a marketplace listing. The laser minutes are the easy part to see. The time around them, peeling, taping, loading the jig, wiping residue and boxing, often takes as long again, and a per-minute price only counts the burn.
Take a coaster that engraves in 2 minutes. If loading, wiping and boxing add another 2 minutes, a price built on 2 minutes pays you for half the job. On a 200-coaster order that is more than 6 unpaid hours.
That is why this calculator times the whole piece, adds the laser's own hourly cost and the one-time setup, and only then shows the price per piece or per set. You still get a simple number for the customer, but it covers every minute the order takes.
Logo setup, spare blanks and the other laser costs it catches
The Quote tab won't call a quote ready until each of these has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Logo setup and file prep, turning a blurry customer JPEG into a clean file sized for the blank.
- Quoting, emails and proof approval, the back-and-forth before the first blank goes in.
- A test engrave plus spare blanks, for dialing in settings and the one that chips.
- A jig for the blank, built once for the order and kept for the reorder.
- Postage and the outer shipping box, because free shipping is never free to you.
- The post office and supply run. 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, 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 own shop and lasers.
- A complete example laser shop, with a finished 50-set coaster quote to study first.
- Laser customer terms you can edit, covering proof approval, natural variation in slate and wood, and items the customer brings in, with logo changes after proof handled as a change order.
- A Job Log that shows your win rate and which orders ran over their hours, 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: home and small laser shops of 1 to 15 people
It fits home shops and small laser businesses of roughly 1 to 15 people on CO2, fiber or diode machines: makers who sell on Etsy or at markets and also take logo orders from local businesses. One diode in a spare room or three machines and a packer, one-off gifts or 500 branded tumblers, it works the same way, because every rate and price in it is yours.
It is not for large shops already running order software with job costing, anyone who wants a list of what other shops charge, or engrave-only services that never handle blanks, packing or shipping. Curious what your own laser hour is worth? Run it through the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing laser work from another shop's Etsy listing. Price every logo order from your own costs, catch the setup and shipping that usually get missed, and see which orders made money.
Laser Engraving Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets