From labor units to a bid number.
Enter line items with quantity, material cost and labor hours per unit, then apply your labor factor, rate, tax, overhead and markup. You see labor hours, crew days and where every dollar of the bid goes. The examples are placeholders: your labor units and supplier pricing go in.
- Labor units per item
- Labor factor
- Markup or margin
- Crew days
Line items Examples are placeholders
Labor
Costs & markup
Bid breakdown
Save your results
Copy these results, then add your approved sample files in the trial brief.
All example costs and labor units are placeholders, not market rates. Use your own labor units, wage rates and supplier quotes.
How an electrical bid rolls up.
Count and measure
Devices, fixtures, gear and every foot of conduit and wire from the drawings.
Apply labor units
Hours per unit for each item, adjusted by a labor factor for height, access and schedule.
Price material
Supplier quotes or your price file, plus sales tax where it applies.
Add the rest
Equipment, subcontracts, overhead and profit: markup on cost or margin on price.
Know which one your bid uses.
| Markup | Equals margin | Margin | Equals markup |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 9.1% | 10% | 11.1% |
| 15% | 13.0% | 15% | 17.6% |
| 20% | 16.7% | 20% | 25.0% |
| 25% | 20.0% | 25% | 33.3% |
Labor units need trustworthy counts.
The calculator is only as good as the counts you feed it. RenderDraw proposes fixture, device, panel and run quantities from electrical drawings, keeps the source sheet on every row, and your estimator approves them before your labor units and pricing are applied.
- Source on every row. Each proposed quantity keeps the sheet and location it came from.
- Estimator approval before pricing. Your estimator accepts, corrects or rejects proposals; nothing is priced until it is approved.
- Addenda through the same review. Changed sheets go back through takeoff and estimator review.
- Your assemblies, your rates. Approved rows hand off to your assemblies, labor units and pricing inputs.
Electrical bid calculator, answered.
How do you calculate an electrical bid?
Take off every item from the drawings, multiply quantities by labor hours per unit and by material cost, adjust labor with a factor for job conditions, add tax, equipment and subs, then apply overhead and profit.
What are electrical labor units?
Standard hours to install one unit of an item, such as a receptacle, a fixture or 100 feet of conduit. Many contractors start from published units and then calibrate them against their own job history.
What is a labor factor?
A multiplier on base labor hours for conditions like working height, occupied buildings, tight schedules or difficult access. 1.0 means normal conditions.
What markup should an electrical contractor use?
It depends on your overhead, risk and market, and only you can set it. Make sure you know whether your number is markup on cost or margin on price; 20% markup is only 16.7% margin.
Can I use this for service work?
Yes, for a quick price. Enter the parts and hours per task, your rate and markup.
Send one plan set. Judge the result yourself.
A focused, no-obligation evaluation on your own drawings. Your sample files remain private while we assess the request.
- Upload one representative plan set (a legible PDF set is the most reliable starting point), plus an addendum if you have one.
- RenderDraw reviews the set and the scope you want tested.
- We follow up with what was extracted, what was flagged for review, and the most useful next step.