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HVAC Technician Break-Even & Billable-Hours Calculator
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The gap between a tech's break-even efficiency and their actual billable percent is the clearest read on whether your next hire adds profit or just cost.
The math, in plain terms.
Every tech carries a break-even — the billable hours they must invoice to cover their fully-loaded cost plus their share of shop overhead. Fully-loaded means wage, payroll burden, workers' comp, benefits, truck, fuel, tools, phone, and training, not just the hourly wage. Divide that total annual cost by your billed rate and you get the billable hours the tech has to produce before contributing a single dollar of profit. Everything above that line is contribution; everything below it is a subsidy you're paying.
Worked example: a tech who costs $95,000 fully loaded, plus $45,000 of allocated overhead, has to cover $140,000. At a $185 billed rate, break-even is $140,000 ÷ $185, or about 757 billable hours a year. Over 240 paid days that's roughly 3.2 billable hours a day. Against 8 paid hours a day — 1,920 hours a year — break-even billable efficiency is about 39%. Run the tech at an actual 60% billable and they invoice 1,152 hours, generating $213,120 in revenue and roughly $73,120 in annual profit contribution.
What it means: the distance between break-even efficiency (39% here) and actual efficiency (60%) is your profit cushion on that tech. A tech idling at 40% is barely paying for themselves; one at 65% is carrying the shop. This is the number to check before you hire — a new tech has to clear their own break-even before they add profit — and the number to watch when deciding whether to raise the rate or attack drive-time and scheduling instead.
Questions, answered.
What counts in a tech's fully-loaded cost?
Base wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, health benefits, the truck payment and fuel, tools and equipment, software seats, phone, and training. A simple test: if the expense goes away when the tech leaves, it belongs here. Using wage alone understates the real cost badly and makes underperforming techs look profitable.
How is this different from a billing-rate calculator?
A rate builder tells you what to charge across the whole shop to fund overhead and margin. This tells you whether one specific tech pays for themselves at that rate, and how hard their schedule has to work to do it. Use the rate tool to set price; use this one to manage capacity, utilization, and hiring.
Should I allocate overhead per tech?
If you want a true profit contribution, yes — divide shop overhead across your billable techs and enter each one's share. Set it to zero to see raw labor break-even only. Both views are useful: the raw view shows if a tech covers their own cost, and the loaded view shows if a new hire actually clears the bar.
Is this financial advice?
No. This is a planning estimate for capacity and staffing decisions, not tax, accounting, or financial advice. Confirm your fully-loaded cost and your utilization figures against your books, and talk to your accountant, before you make hiring or pricing decisions based on it.
From spreadsheet to system.
Watching every tech's break-even and billable percent in real time is exactly the capacity math The HVAC OS automates.
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