Price tables, benches and custom commissions from your own shop costs
You enter what your woodshop costs to run one time. From then on, each piece is priced from your lumber, your machines and your hours, not from what a maker online charges.
- Know what a shop hour really costs Shop rent, dust collection, blades, insurance and your own wage become one break-even rate per billable hour, plus a rate for each machine.
- Price the whole build, not just the wood Milling, cutting, joinery, glue-up, sanding, finish and any outside work like a metal base each get their own line.
- Quote one piece or a matching set You get the price for one table and for 2, 4 or 8 of them, so setup is spread fairly on bigger orders.
- Get paid for the hours around the build Design, calls, lumber runs and delivery sit on a checklist that has to be answered before the quote is ready.
- Hand over a proper quote A one-page customer quote with the approved design, the deposit and furniture terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- Learn which pieces earned their keep The Job Log holds every quote, won or lost, with the hours each piece really took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns board feet and bench hours into a furniture quote
Six tabs take you from your shop's yearly bills to a quote the customer signs. You set up the shop once, update lumber prices when the yard changes them, and build one quote per piece.
- Start HereWhich cells a woodshop fills first and what the yellow, grey and red cells mean. Expect one evening of setup.
- Shop SetupRent, power, dust collection, blades and bits, you and any helper, and your jointer, planer, table saw and sander, worked into one break-even rate plus a cost per machine hour.
- Price ListWalnut, oak and maple by the board foot, plywood by the sheet, finish by the quart, glue, sandpaper and hardware, each with the date you last checked the price.
- QuotePick the lumber, list the build steps with their minutes and machines, answer the checklist, and read the price for one piece and for larger batches.
- Customer QuoteOne page for the customer or designer: the piece, the price, the deposit and your terms.
- Job LogQuoted hours next to real hours for every table and bench, so the next quote is closer.
What is a break-even shop rate? It is what each billable hour in your shop has to bring in to pay your wages, rent, dust collection, blades and every other yearly cost, before any profit. Hours spent sweeping, sharpening and fetching lumber aren't billable, so the rate sits well above what you pay yourself. The true hourly rate guide walks through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up furniture shop and its $2,027 coffee table quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The shop is an owner and one woodworker, and it has to bring in $58.29 per billable hour to break even. Its sample piece is a 48 by 24 by 18 inch walnut coffee table with a thick solid top, breadboard ends, tapered legs and an oil finish, built to an interior designer's drawing and delivered.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Walnut, finish, hardware and bench time | $1,103 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $446 |
| 4 | Markup, cushion and profit | $478 |
| 5 | Price to the designer | $2,027 |
The $478 stays in the shop after every cost, both wages included, and the table earns about $87.26 per labour hour over roughly 17 hours of work. The hours around the build add almost as much as the walnut does. The step-by-step version is on how to charge for woodworking projects.
$446
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 8 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 pricing furniture by what you'd pay for it loses money
A lot of makers add up the lumber bill, picture themselves as the buyer, and cut the number because they would never spend that much on a table. But the people who buy custom furniture are not shopping like woodworkers. They are paying for the design, the wood and the hours, and many of them expect a real price.
Picture a coffee table priced at $600 because that felt fair. If the walnut and finish cost $475 and the table takes 17 hours, that leaves $125, or about $7.35 an hour, before rent, blades or the dust collector are paid. Sold through a designer, who marks it up again, the maker gets the smallest share of the final price.
This calculator starts from your shop's real rate and your real lumber cost, then shows the price at the end. You know what the number covers before you say it out loud, so there is less temptation to knock it down.
Design time, lumber runs and the other build costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each of these lines has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Design, drawing and cut list, the hours before a board is cut.
- Calls, emails and invoices, the back and forth with the customer or designer.
- The lumber yard trip and picking boards. Left as No in the example on purpose, so you see the file flag it until you add your own time.
- A finish sample board the customer approves before the top gets oiled.
- The miscut, the bad board, the extra stick of lumber.
- Delivery: blankets, wrap, loading, the drive and carrying a heavy table into the room.
Exactly what you get
One .xlsx spreadsheet, downloaded the moment you pay. It works in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and there is no app, login or subscription.
- The six-tab calculator, set up for furniture and small-batch woodwork.
- A complete sample furniture shop, with the walnut coffee table quote to study first.
- Furniture customer terms you can edit, covering what the deposit buys, wood movement, and changes after the approved drawing being priced as a change order.
- A Job Log of quoted against real hours, the habit behind 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: custom furniture makers and small woodshops
It fits one- to 15-person woodshops and custom furniture makers building tables, benches, beds, shelving and cabinets to order, and Etsy or market sellers who want to see what a piece earns after fees. A weekend maker selling cutting boards or a two-person shop building dining sets for designers, it works the same way, because the wood prices, hours and costs in it are yours.
It is not for production shops already running estimating software, anyone who only wants a free cut-list or board-foot calculator, or furniture flippers pricing thrift finds by what the market pays. To check your shop rate first, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing furniture by what you would pay for it. Price every piece from your own lumber, bench hours and the time around the build, and see which pieces made money.
Woodworking & Furniture Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets