Price prototypes, short runs and repeat parts from your own shop rate
Your shop's costs go in once. From then on every RFQ is priced from your machines, your people and your supplier's bar prices.
- Know what a spindle hour really costs you Rent, power, CAD/CAM seats, machine payments and wages, yours included, become one break-even rate plus a running cost for each machine.
- Price the whole part, not just the cycle time Stock, the saw cut, every CNC op, inserts, and the anodizer or plater each get their own line.
- Quote price breaks the way buyers ask for them One quote gives the order total and the price each at 1, 10, 25 and 100 pieces.
- Stop giving away the desk and bench work Programming, first-article inspection, deburr and packing sit on a checklist that must be answered before the quote is done.
- Send the buyer a tidy quote the same day A one-page quote with your price breaks, lead time and terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- Find out which jobs actually paid The Job Log keeps every quote, won or lost, next to the hours the parts really took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns stock, setup and spindle time into a price per part
Six tabs: set up the shop once, keep supplier prices current, then build one quote per drawing.
- Start HereThe order to fill things in. Plan on one evening.
- Shop SetupYearly overhead, your people and your machines (CNC mill, lathe, manual mill, bandsaw) become a break-even rate and a cost per running hour for each machine.
- Price ListBar, plate, fasteners, cutters and boxes at your supplier's price, dated, with a red flag when a price is six months old.
- QuotePick the stock, list each operation with its setup hours and minutes per piece, add outside finishing, answer the checklist, and read the price at four quantities.
- Customer QuoteThe page the buyer gets: part, price breaks, lead time and terms.
- Job LogOnce the parts ship, actual hours go in beside the quoted ones.
What is a break-even rate? It is the amount each billable hour in your shop must earn to pay everyone, the owner included, plus rent, power, software and every other bill for the year. Charge less and the shop loses money on that hour; everything above it is profit. The true hourly rate guide walks through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up machine shop and its $2,815.25 bracket order quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample shop is an owner, one machinist and a part-time deburr helper, breaking even at $71.72 per billable hour. Its quote is 25 motor mount brackets in 6061 aluminum with threaded inserts and a clear anodize, cut in a saw op and two CNC ops.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Stock, machine time, inserts and anodize | $1,407.13 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $729.59 |
| 4 | Markups, cushion and profit | $678.53 |
| 5 | Price for 25 brackets | $2,815.25 |
That is $112.61 a bracket, and the $678.53 is what the shop keeps once every cost, the owner's pay included, is covered. The same quote prices one bracket at $1,272.71 and 100 at $76.36 each, because programming, setup and the anodize minimum land on whatever quantity is ordered. The step-by-step version is on how to price CNC work.
$730
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 14 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 per part from memory loses money on short runs
Most small shops quote from the owner's head, and a number that worked on last month's 200-piece run gets used on a 5-piece order of a similar part. The per-part price hides the fact that setup is paid once, whatever the quantity.
Say setting up two ops takes 4 hours at a $72 break-even, about $288. Spread over 100 parts that is under $3 a part. Spread over 5 parts it is almost $58 a part. Quote the 5-piece order at the 100-piece price and the setup comes straight out of your pocket.
The calculator costs the one-time work and the per-piece work separately, then shows the price each at every quantity. The buyer sees why 10 costs less each than 1, and you never spread setup over parts nobody ordered.
Programming, first-article checks and the other work around the spindle it catches
The Quote tab won't call a quote done until each line has a Yes, No or N/A. These are the lines most often missing from a traveler:
- CAD/CAM programming, the desk hours before the first chip.
- First-article check and inspection, where tight tolerances cost time even when the cycle looks short.
- Deburr, wash and blast, the bench step that is easy to leave off.
- Soft jaws or a fixture plate, small on a thousand parts and big on three.
- A special cutter bought for this job only. Left as N/A in the sample, so you decide how your shop handles it.
- Packing each part and insured freight, per-piece time at the shipping table.
Exactly what you get
You pay once and the .xlsx file downloads right away. It works in Microsoft Excel and in Google Sheets, with nothing to subscribe to or log in to.
- The six-tab calculator, empty cells ready for your shop.
- A filled-in sample shop, with the 25-bracket quote and its four price breaks to study first.
- Machine shop customer terms you can edit, covering drawing revisions as a written change order, rush jobs and customer-supplied stock.
- A Job Log for quoted against actual hours and 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: CNC job shops quoting from customer drawings
It fits owner-operators and small CNC job shops, roughly 1 to 15 people, doing prototypes and short runs from customer drawings. One mill in a garage or a floor of machines, a single part or a few hundred, it works the same way, because the rate, the machines and the op times are all yours.
It is not for production shops already running an ERP with job costing, for anyone after a free fill-in form, or for automotive engine machine shops pricing valve jobs off a flat menu. See the machine shop rates owners charge, or work out your own rate in the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop quoting parts from a gut number. Price every drawing from your own spindle hours, stock and outside finishing at 1, 10, 25 and 100 pieces, and see which jobs made money.
Machine Shop Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets