Free Tools
The numbers most owners avoid.
Three calculators built for service business owners in Australia and New Zealand. Takes less than five minutes to run all three.
Wages % Calculator
2 minutesWhat share of your revenue goes to people — worked out properly, including the on-costs most owners leave out.
Pick your industry and your turnover size and the tool shows the range its publisher actually publishes for a business like yours — Australian Taxation Office (ATO), 2023–24 income year, in Australia; 2025 financial year (Stats NZ) in New Zealand. The two are kept apart on purpose: they measure different things over different populations, so they are never shown side by side as though one were the other. A published range is a signal, not a target — sitting outside it means the business may have room to improve, not that a number should be aimed at.
Use it when the business is busy but the bank balance doesn't show it, and before you add a hire or change anyone's pay.
Breakeven Calculator
90 secondsThe minimum revenue your business needs each week to cover its fixed costs. Most owners don't know this number. You should.
Fixed costs divided by the share of each sale left after product cost, which gives a weekly floor, a monthly equivalent, and the number of clients or jobs a week it takes to reach it. Wages are not in it — this is the cost of existing for a week with the doors open, and everything above it is what pays the people who did the work. Nothing here is benchmarked: no publisher we would cite publishes a break-even ratio, so the only figures on the page are the ones you type.
Use it when cash feels tight, and before you sign a lease, take on finance or add a fixed cost.
Service Pricing Calculator
3 minutesWork backwards from what a service really costs you to deliver, to the minimum price and the price at your own target margin.
Delivery time at a loaded staff rate, plus consumables, plus your own overhead allocation, gives the cost to deliver. From there: the minimum price that merely covers it, the price at the margin you set, and what margin your current price is genuinely earning. We publish no target margin, because nobody we would cite publishes one — the boxes start at values that let the tool compute, and they are placeholders rather than advice.
Use it when you add a service, review your prices, or suspect a busy service isn't paying for itself.
Where the figures come from
Two of these tools show you nothing but your own arithmetic. The wages calculator is the one carrying published figures, and they are named and dated: Australian Taxation Office (ATO), 2023–24 income year, for Australia; and for New Zealand, the 2025 financial year (Stats NZ). The two countries are reported separately because they are not the same measurement — different ranges over different populations, and a numerator that includes contractors on one side of the Tasman and excludes them on the other.
ATO labour-cost benchmarks exclude the owner's own labour. So the published band describes what a business pays other people — not what it costs to staff the business. An owner-operator who compares their own wages line to that band is comparing unlike things. They will look "efficient" for a reason that has nothing to do with efficiency: their own labour is free in the data and unpaid in life. The honest comparison adds the owner back at a market rate for the hours they actually work, then compares. A salon owner cutting hair 40 hours a week at 22% wages is not beating a salon at 34% — they are likely paying themselves nothing.
It is a signal, not a target. The ATO's own framing is diagnostic, not aspirational: falling outside the range means "your business may have room to improve" and, separately, that you are more likely to attract ATO attention. It is not a number to aim at.
These tools are a starting point. If the numbers surprise you, that's where we start.
Book a Discovery Call