Price every cushion, not every couch. Free, no signup.
A sectional is not one item. Add every piece, or the hours hide.
Pet homes and ground-in grime take extra passes. Price the passes, not the hope.
Assumes every job pays and costs like this one.
Upholstery quotes die on piece counts. A sectional quoted as one couch is really hours of cushions, so this calculator prices every piece plus the leaks. Start with your bar: minimum dollars per hour (50), a minimum job fee ($99), profit margin percent (20), and a daily take-home goal. Pick a preset: Sofa, Sectional, or Living room, each filling piece rows with typical prices and cleaning minutes as editable starting points. Add or remove pieces, change a piece type, and the tool fills that type's usual price. Set the heavy soil and pet odor adder as a percent of piece prices. Add stain treatments and fabric protector by count, tick the deodorizer box, then enter drive minutes, miles, vehicle cost per mile, and setup time. Results show the line-item breakdown, the recommended quote (cost plus margin, rounded up to $25, never below your minimum), and your effective hourly rate. Verdicts are PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE BUT LEAKING, WORKING TOO CHEAP, or LOSING MONEY. The gut check shows your dollars left on the table, and the day planner turns your goal into jobs. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Sectional preset at a $50 bar: 1 sectional at $260, 120 labor minutes = 2.0 hrs. Add 2 stain treatments at $25 = $50. Add-on minutes = 2 x 10 = 20, or 0.333 hrs. Committed hours = 2.0 + 40/60 drive + 30/60 setup + 0.333 = 3.5 hrs. Travel = 24 x 0.67 = $16.08. Revenue = 260 + 50 = $310. True cost = 3.5 x 50 + 16.08 = $191.08. With a 20 percent margin: 501.08 x 1.20 = $601.30, rounded up to the nearest $25 = $625. Effective rate = (625 - 16.08) / 3.5 = $173.98/hr, which clears the $50 bar, so the verdict is PRICED RIGHT. A $300 gut quote pays (300 - 16.08) / 3.5 = $81.12/hr and leaves $325 on the table.
**Q** Why price pieces instead of the whole job?
Because a sectional is not one item. A 7-piece sectional is really hours of separate cleaning surfaces, and a flat per-couch quote averages the work down to nothing. Piece rows keep the hours honest.
**Q** What is the soil and pet odor adder for?
Extra passes. Pet homes and ground-in grime take more chemistry and more strokes, so the adder applies a percent of piece prices to pay for that time. Set it to zero for clean jobs.
**Q** Why are add-on minutes counted separately?
Stain treatments, protector, and deodorizer take real minutes that piece prices never included. The tool adds 10 minutes per stain, 5 per protector piece, and 15 for deodorizer into committed hours.
**Q** What does the minimum job fee protect?
Tiny jobs. Drive, setup, and chemistry cost the same whether you clean one chair or a house, so the minimum floors the quote so small jobs cannot price below it.
**Q** How is the effective rate different from revenue per hour?
It subtracts travel and divides by committed hours, not just cleaning hours. That is what your time actually earns on the job, measured against your bar.