Price staging projects so the flat fee pays. Free, no signup. All defaults are editable starting points.
Home stagers lose money on the flat project quote. One round number sounds fine until free consultations, furniture rental for every room, crew hours, design time, the truck fee, and lingering months are all priced at zero. Start with your bar (75), margin percent (20), minimum fee ($1,500), and monthly goal ($6,000). Pick a preset: Consult only, 1-bed condo, 3-bed home, or Vacant luxury. Each fills rooms, rental, months listed, lingering months, install hours, design hours, truck fee, helper hours, consult hours, and consult fee. The leaks card prices the giveaways: unpaid consult hours minus any consult fee, an occupied-home toggle that cuts rental 30 percent, helper hours times pay, drive minutes, and miles. Results show your time, rental, lingering risk at half the extra months, helper, truck, drive, rental markup earned, true cost, the recommended flat quote (never below the minimum, rounded up to $25), your effective rate after rental, and profit. Verdicts are PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE, BUT LEAKING, WORKING TOO CHEAP, or LOSING MONEY. The gut check grades your instinct fee; the month planner turns the goal into projects. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. The 1-bed condo preset at a $75 bar: your own hours are 3 consult plus 8 design plus 12 install plus 0.8 drive equals 23.8 hours at $75, which is $1,787.50. Furniture rental is 5 rooms times $250 for 2 months equals $2,500; lingering risk is 5 times $250 times 1 month at half equals $625. Helper is 6 hours at $25 equals $150; truck is $300; vehicle is 30 miles at $0.67 plus drive time equals $40.93. True cost is $5,403.43. Recommended quote is max($1,500, ceil(5,403.43 times 1.20 divided by 25) times 25) equals $6,500. Effective rate is (6,500 minus 2,500) divided by 23.8 equals $167.83 per hour, well over the bar, so the verdict is PRICED RIGHT. A $4,000 gut fee pays $62.93 per hour and falls $1,403.43 below true cost. The month planner turns the $6,000 goal into 0.9 projects and 22.0 hours.
Why is the effective rate measured after the rental pass-through?
The furniture rental goes to the rental company, so the rate that matters is the quote minus rental divided by your own hours. That is the number graded against your bar.
What does the occupied-home toggle change?
It cuts furniture rental 30 percent because you are working with the client's own pieces. Occupied staging is a design job, not a furniture job.
How does the lingering-risk line work?
Extra months are priced at half the rental cost. Some homes sell inside the expected window, so the tool prices the risk at half instead of zero or full.
What does CLOSE, BUT LEAKING mean here?
Your effective rate lands between 75 percent of your bar and your bar. The free consult or the lingering rental is usually the leak.
Why does the month planner flag 160 hours?
That is full-time territory. The note tells you to raise the fee instead of adding projects, because more projects at a leaking price just scale the leak.