Everhour turns billable time and expenses into invoices, while your hourly rate starts with clean cost-plus math.
Find the right rate based on your annual expenses, desired profit margin, and available billable hours. Stop guessing.
Rent, software, gear, salary
Time lost to admin, marketing, etc.
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
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Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
An hourly-rate calculation answers one practical question: what must you charge per billable hour to cover your target income, overhead, self-funded benefits, and tax reserve. On iPad, the math is the same as on a desktop browser. The useful workflow difference is input handling: keep your annual budget, expense list, or tax notes open in Split View, then copy figures into the calculator without retyping from memory.
The result is a floor, not a universal price. A U.S. freelancer may still quote by project, milestone, or value, but the hourly floor shows whether that quote pays for the real business. A 2023 Fiverr survey of U.S. freelancers found project-based pricing was more common than hourly pricing, yet hourly math still protects fixed-fee work from underpricing.
The core formula is `(target income + overhead + benefits substitute + tax reserve) / billable hours`. Use USD figures for a U.S. calculation. Target income means the personal income you want before individual tax planning adjustments. Overhead includes ordinary and necessary business expenses. Benefits substitute covers items you fund yourself, such as insurance, retirement contributions, and unpaid time off.
Use billable hours as the denominator, not total work hours. If you want $88,000 in income, expect $18,400 in overhead, set aside $14,600 for benefits, and reserve $24,000 for taxes, the annual cost base is $145,000. With 1,450 billable hours, the required rate is $100.00 per billable hour. Total working time would make the rate look lower and would leave admin time unpaid.
A U.S. sole proprietor or independent contractor generally reports business profit or loss on Schedule C and uses Schedule SE for Social Security and Medicare taxes on self-employment income. Self-employed individuals generally pay quarterly estimated taxes because no employer withholds income tax, Social Security, or Medicare from contractor pay. Treat that reserve as a required pricing input, not leftover cash.
For 2026 estimated tax, net self-employment profit is multiplied by 92.35%. The resulting amount is subject to 12.4% Social Security up to the $184,500 wage base plus 2.9% Medicare. Additional Medicare Tax adds 0.9% above $200,000 for single, head of household, and qualifying surviving spouse filers, $250,000 for married filing jointly, and $125,000 for married filing separately.
A one-off calculator is enough when you need a rate floor for a proposal, a renewal conversation, or a quick check against public profile-rate bands. Upwork's 2026 marketplace guide lists directional public profile rates of $10-$25 for entry and admin work, $25-$75 for intermediate work, and $75-$150+ for specialized work, with higher rates for development, AI, and strategic consulting.
A managed workflow matters after the rate becomes part of live client work. Approved hours, non-billable tasks, expenses, invoice status, and accounting handoff all need a record. Everhour Billing & Invoicing converts tracked billable time and expenses into invoices, calculates amounts from rates while excluding non-billable tasks, and exports invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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No. An iPad changes the workflow, not the formula. The U.S. hourly-rate calculation still uses target income, overhead, self-funded benefits, tax reserve, and realistic billable hours. The iPad advantage is practical: Split View lets you keep source figures beside the calculator, which reduces retyping errors during a quick pricing check.
Overhead includes ordinary and necessary business expenses you pay to operate as a freelancer or independent contractor. Common examples include software, equipment, professional services, marketing, payment processing, workspace costs, and business insurance. Personal living costs belong in the target income input unless they are legitimate business expenses.
Billable hours carry all nonbillable work. Proposals, onboarding, bookkeeping, training, sick time, unpaid gaps, and admin still consume time, but clients do not pay for those hours directly. A lower billable-hour estimate raises the required rate because the same annual cost base must be recovered across fewer paid hours.
Yes. For U.S. self-employed pricing, the tax reserve should account for federal self-employment and income-tax reserves before the total is divided by billable hours. For 2026 estimated tax, self-employment tax applies to 92.35% of net self-employment earnings, with Social Security capped by the $184,500 wage base and Medicare uncapped.
Yes. Multiply the hourly floor by the hours you expect to spend, then compare that amount with the fixed fee. A $100.00 hourly floor means a 32-hour project needs at least $3,200 before risk, revisions, rush timing, or specialized value. Project pricing can exceed the floor, but it should not fall below it by accident.
Everhour Billing & Invoicing turns tracked billable time and expenses into client invoices. It calculates invoice amounts from project or member rates, excludes non-billable work, supports client defaults and invoice customization, and exports invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks with status synced back to Everhour.
Everhour separates cost rates from billable rates and supports default per-person rates with per-project overrides. Rate changes can be dated, so older reports keep their original calculations while new work uses the updated rate.
Set the right hourly floor, then let Everhour carry approved billable time, expenses, and rates into invoices for cleaner client billing.
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