Totally gorgeous design! Well done.

Thanks Wayde! I hope it turns out to be useful!

Looks great!

One question tho, for a startup like myself (and theres probably others on here as well) How do you work out your actual expenses for the year so that you can input them into the form?

This is amazing, very useful. I think I’ll be using this a lot over the next few months.

Good question Tyler, in fact that is probably a whole blog post in itself! I think the key is to simply break it down as much as possible and estimate your way through. Its a bit like estimating how long a job is going to take, if you break it down it becomes a lot more manageable. Unfortunately until you’ve done this for a year and compared back to your estimates, there is always going to be a bit of guesswork involved.

This is great, and accurate. I have used a similar method to figure out what I needed to charge hourly. Though, the method of, pen & paper with trying to see if you calculated everything takes a bit longer. This is a great accurate simple to use calculator. Great Job!

Wow, Colis, You never stop surprising me. Amazing job!

Hi Collis,
Very good job! I tested with my figures and gave me almost close to my rates. I am sure, it will be very useful to new freelancers and consultants. It will be a good tool even for the small businesses if changed a little. I recommend this tool to my students.

Great Job guys! Thanks Lewis.

RajeshShakya.com

The calculator works great and should be a big help!

The only thing I would add is the ability to save the form so that you can come back later and tweak the numbers when you have a better approximation of what some of your expenses might be. I am not looking forward to calculating all those numbers again.

Now all we need is a Freelance Project Automatic Estimator!

awesome! this is very helpful to me esp. since i am just starting up my business …thanks

I’m just re-looking over this again, does this calculator take into account tax?

Nice too bad it doesn’t really add up if you only work freelance parttime.

Hmmm, a big omission is not taking into account taxes… Great tool though!

First of all, the design is great! I really love it. But I have a major problem with this.

“Remember your hourly rate should always take into account factors like market demand, industry standards, skill level and experience”

In my opinion this should be all that determines your hourly rate! I don’t want to be paying a noob $100/hour just because he rents a fancy apartment in a posh neighborhood. While it certainly feels nice calculating your rate based on how much money you need to make, to be fair to your clients you should be calculating it based on the value of the services you offer. I’d say if you do use this calculator you have to be prepared to drastically alter the end result after taking into consideration demand/skill/experience.

But I think that part shouldn’t be an afterthought, but rather it should be the foundation of deciding your rate. If you aren’t good enough to be charging a rate that pays for your fancy apartment, then you shouldn’t be renting a fancy apartment, or you shouldn’t be freelancing. Basically don’t let the rest of your life decide your rate. Let your skill and value decide your rate and you may have to adjust the rest of your life to match.

Wow cool tool indeed. made me think that maybe I am under charging

@ Benek

You raise a good point, but no noob is going to get paid $100/hour.

Clients will pay what a freelancer is worth.

I see this calc more as a guide for experienced freelancers who aren’t so adept in doing sums – and isn’t that all of us?

OT: What happened to the ‘Subscribe to comments’ checkbox?

@Tyler & Ryan, Good point, I’ll have a think about how to put tax into the equation. The trouble with tax is its so variant for different countries

@Benek, I agree, this of this more as a tool. if you want to see what you need to charge to meet your costs, you can use the calculator. If I could make a calculator for other factors, trust me I would! When I ran my own calculations, I came out much cheaper than I actually used to charge, though i guess thats a good thing

@Wayde, ah yes, I removed it as there was some sort of problem with the server sending emails that was making adding a comment or approving comments paralyzingly slow. I’ll see if I can get it to work again!

awsome

Love the calculator and the sexy design! I would have loved the option to input prices in a different currency, say sterling.

great timing on the need for this with me! thanks a bunch.

Hey chaps,

Keep a note of all he cool ideas and if there proves to be enough of a demand then I’ll have a think about extra features if you like!

Lewis

@Benek

You made some good points, but there is a chain of command.

When I used to rent, I needed to provide proof of income, employment history, blah blah blah before I were to be approved. If I met their criteria, then I would be able to have that posh lifestyle, but only if I had a history of earning that much $. They won’t rent to me unless I can pay the rent…

I think that the calculator is rather accurate. Mortgage, Investments, etc. If for no other reason then it gives a “real world” example of how much you should expect to earn when you have a wife, kids and a home. Most freelancers I know who rely fulltime are in the $60-$100/hour range.

It’s simple business to base costs on expenses. If you can minimize expenses, then you can reduce your costs.

Er, yeah taxes are a pretty big deal. Especially in the US, you’re tossing out a large chunk of your income 4 times a year. Not including taxes means that final number is really 2/3 of what your hourly rate should be, a pretty big margin of error.

Inspiring tool

It would be great to add a field for taxes–that can’t be left out. Since it will be different for all countries, maybe just have a field for estimated tax percent?

Haha nice!
love it =)
++recommend

Fun tool. Worked more as a check that my freelance rate can actually sustain the life I’m living. (Not a real shock, as I’ve been freelance for a few years now–maybe it’s more that my life has moved to fit the rate I’m charging?)

And you do have to keep taxes in mind. I’m still reeling from April 15 (tax day in the US). Not that it was a surprise, but an awfully large check to have to write.

Wow this is useful! I’m WAY undercharging

Michael from designandprogram.com

This is absolutely useful!

It’s a nice tool to see what you need given your personal demands, but not a good tool to sell your rates to a client.

Salaries for all sorts of professions are well published, e.g. salary.com and others.

The question is, how much above the hourly wage of a salaried employee should a contractor charge to end up at the SAME real compensation. This needs to take into account benefits (401k, other pension, health care, paid vacations, etc.), taxes (like self-employment tax, business licenses, etc.), contractor owned, rented or hired resources (equipment, office space, office help).

If I can show such an equation, based on real hard costs and real salary market data, then I can justify my rates, but if I say I need $X to pay my mortgage, then all I may hear is get a smaller house…

So the calculator is great, but it covers only half the equation, the one that answers the contractor’s needs, it doesn’t answer the client’s questions as to why he should pay that much.

“The question is, how much above the hourly wage of a salaried employee should a contractor charge to end up at the SAME real compensation.”

I found a set of calculators here that seem to take into account at factors like employment tax, retirement, and insurance. And it’s pretty fast, containing just on interview page that constantly updates.

I’ve wrote a tool for the desktop for calculating freelancer hourly rates and project estimates. It can be downloaded here: http://blog.hexagonstar.com/downloads/feat/
I’ve wrote it mainly for my own purpose but I hope it can be useful for others, especially freelancing starters.

Beautiful tool you’ve created. For those interested in understanding some of the financial mechanics involved, you can also check out the tool that I created at http://www.xbarit.com/bradblog/index.php/2007/10/12/billable-rate-calculator/.

it doesn’t work… the link is broken

Bummer! http://www.freelanceswitch.com/rates is no longer working. Do you guys have a new URL for the freelancer calculator?