How many jobs you actually need to break even
Your break-even is the number of jobs a month where the profit you make exactly covers your overheads, with nothing left over. Add your monthly overheads to any profit target, divide by your profit on an average job, and that is how many jobs you need. Below that number, being busy is not the same as making money.
Ask most tradespeople how busy they are and they can tell you straight away. Ask them how many jobs a month they need just to cover the bills, and most have never worked it out. That gap is exactly where a lot of businesses quietly struggle while feeling, on the surface, like they are doing fine.
A full diary feels like success. A quiet week feels like trouble. Neither feeling tells you what you actually need to know, which is whether the jobs you are doing are covering what it costs to run the business at all.
Why overheads keep running whether you work or not
Rent or a home-office share, insurance, the van, your phone, admin, and your own wage or drawings, they all go out the same in a busy month or a quiet one. That is the entire point of a break-even number: it is measured against what you owe regardless of effort, not against how hard you have been working.
A worked example
Say your monthly overheads, including your own wage, come to $4,500, and you want an extra $1,500 of profit on top as a buffer. Your average job is worth $600 at a 40% margin:
| Profit per job ($600 × 40%) | $240 |
| Monthly overheads | $4,500 |
| Plus target profit | $1,500 |
| Total needed | $6,000 |
| Jobs needed this month | 25 |
Twenty-five jobs at $600 each is $15,000 of revenue, and at 8 hours a job that is 200 billable hours for the month, a little under 50 hours a week. Seen as a single number, "$4,500 of overheads" is easy to shrug off. Seen as "25 jobs, minimum, before I have made a cent for myself," it is a lot more concrete.
Set a target, not just a break-even
Break-even alone only tells you the floor, the point where you have worked for nothing. Adding a profit target on top turns the number into something worth aiming for, whether that target is savings, a buffer for the quiet months everyone eventually has, or simply a wage that reflects the risk of running your own business rather than working for someone else.
If you are falling short most months
- Check your pricing first. Raising your margin on every job you already do is usually the fastest lever, because it improves every job you win from here, not just the next one.
- Look hard at overheads. Something on that list may not be earning its keep. Cutting it lowers the number of jobs you need before you have started.
- Only then chase more work. Winning more jobs at a price that barely covers costs just means working harder to stand still.
Frequently asked questions
What does break-even mean for a trade business?
What counts as a monthly overhead?
Should I include my own wage in overheads?
What should I do if I am short of break-even most months?
The takeaway
Being busy tells you nothing about whether you are covered. Knowing your break-even number does. Work it out once, check it against a real month, and you will know exactly what a slow patch actually costs you, and exactly how many jobs turn effort into profit.