Break-Even Revenue Guide - What Your Business Must Cover

Break-even is not the goal, it is the floor. This guide shows the revenue a crew needs just to cover its costs, and the larger number it actually needs to hit a real margin.

Break-even revenue answers one question: how much does this business need to bring in just to cover what it already spends. It is a floor, not a target. A business running at exactly break-even is working for free, every dollar past that floor is what actually funds profit, growth, or the owner's own pay.

Two costs, one number

Break-even revenue adds two things together: fixed costs for the period (insurance, equipment payments, overhead that does not change with the workload) and the labor cost of the crew-hours committed for that same period. The sum is the revenue floor, fall short of it and the business is losing money even if every job gets done.

This is a whole-business number, not a per-job one. Minimum Profitable Job Price answers "what should this one job cost," Break-Even Revenue answers "what does the whole operation need this week or month," a different altitude on the same underlying math.

A worked example

Take a 2-person crew, 40 hours a week, at a $20 base wage (loaded to $26.00/hour at the 30% burden default), plus $2,000 a week in fixed costs. Labor cost for the week: 80 crew-hours x $26.00 = $2,080. Add the $2,000 fixed cost and break-even revenue for the week is $4,080.

That is the floor, not the goal. At the site's 35% target margin default, actual required revenue is $4,080 / (1 - 0.35) = $6,276.92, about $2,200 more than break-even. The gap between those two numbers is exactly what a target margin is for, the cushion that turns a business that survives into one that actually profits.

Where this number actually gets used

Break-even revenue is a planning number, not a per-bid one. Check it monthly or seasonally against actual booked revenue to see whether the business is on pace, and use Required Revenue per Crew-Hour to translate the same floor into a per-hour billing bar every job and every crew-hour should clear.

Key takeaway. Break-even is the floor a business survives on, not the number it should aim for. Always check actual revenue against the target-margin figure, not just break-even.

Assumptions

The worked example uses a $2,000 weekly fixed-cost figure and a $20 base wage, both illustrative, not claims about typical costs.
Break-even revenue covers fixed and labor costs only, it does not include profit, that is what the target-margin figure adds on top.

Last updated: 2026-08-21

Frequently asked questions

Is break-even revenue the same as the minimum price on a single job?

No. Minimum Profitable Job Price prices one job at a target margin. Break-Even Revenue is a whole-business or whole-crew number for a period, the floor before any profit target is applied at all.

What counts as a fixed cost here?

Costs that do not change with how many properties get serviced that week: equipment payments, insurance, and other overhead that is billed the same whether the crew works 20 hours or 50. Materials and per-job costs are not fixed costs, they scale with the work.

Why does the target-margin revenue look so much higher than break-even?

Because dividing by (1 - margin) grows faster than most people expect at higher margins. At 35% target margin, required revenue is roughly 54% higher than break-even, not 35% higher, that gap is exactly what funds real profit rather than just survival.

How often should I recheck this number?

Whenever fixed costs, crew size, or wages change meaningfully, and at least at the start of each season, since equipment payments and insurance premiums often reset annually.

The Break-Even Revenue Guide