📝 Locum Contract Pricing Calculator
Not every locum deal needs the full white-glove engagement. When the provider handles their own housing and travel, or the facility covers them, you can price the locum inside your existing contract staffing model: same framework, different burden math. This calculator, straight from Dee's How To Charge workbook, compares standard contract, locum W2, and locum 1099 burden side by side, builds your total cost floor, applies your markup, and projects what the contract generates per shift, week, month, quarter, and year. Run your numbers once free; the $27 one-time unlock keeps every section live forever and includes the Excel workbook.
Burden: standard contract column
Your normal contract staffing burden, for comparison. Use this when you are NOT handling housing or travel directly: the provider manages their own logistics or the facility pays those costs. If your agency IS providing housing, travel, and full support, use the Locum Tenens Engagement calculator instead.
Burden: locum W2 column
Same components, locum-flavored: malpractice and credentialing run higher, health coverage often lighter on short assignments.
Locums: lower if the provider is 1099 or carries their own coverage.
Agency still carries GL regardless.
MUCH higher for physicians and CRNAs.
Short assignments are often exempt from ACA.
Locums credentialing is more intensive.
Locum sourcing costs more per placement.
Burden: locum 1099 column
Payroll taxes drop away when the provider is a true independent contractor, but liability and credentialing costs stay with the agency.
1099: provider pays their own SE tax.
Not applicable to 1099.
Not applicable to 1099.
Your locum contract pricing
In the source sheet this selector was decorative (the burden formula always used the W2 column). Here it actually switches the applied burden between the W2 and 1099 totals above.
Schedule (for the income projections)
Monthly uses 4.33 weeks per month (standard staffing average). Quarterly = 13 weeks. Annual = 52 weeks.
Estimates for planning, not financial advice. Rates, premiums, and burden numbers are the workbook's guidance ranges; your market and your carriers decide the real ones.
Does this resonate?
Locum staffing is a real agency model. Build the rest of it.
If pricing locum contracts feels like your lane, the platform can turn it into a full plan: positioning, credentialing and licensing checklists, and the week-by-week path from first provider to a running locum desk.
Build my launch plan free →Good questions about this math
How is this different from the Locum Tenens Engagement calculator?
The engagement model prices the full package: the agency absorbs housing, travel, per diem, and malpractice, and typically quotes a daily rate. This contract variation prices the same locum pay rates through your regular hourly contract staffing framework, for deals where the provider manages their own logistics or the facility covers them. Lighter overhead, higher margin, but a lower value proposition to the provider. Know which model you are selling before you quote.
Who covers malpractice, housing, and travel in this model?
In this variation, housing and travel are either the provider's responsibility or the facility provides them directly, which is exactly why the burden is lighter. Malpractice still shows up in your burden table (the sheet defaults to 2.5 percent for W2 locums and 1 percent for 1099), because many agencies still carry or supplement coverage. Set those lines to match what your contract actually says.
What changes between a W2 locum and a 1099 locum?
Payroll taxes. The default W2 column totals 20.95 percent (FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers comp, plus insurance and credentialing); the 1099 column totals 5 percent because the provider pays their own self-employment tax and unemployment lines do not apply. On a $175 pay rate that is roughly a $28 per hour difference in your cost floor, which is why the employment type selector matters.
Is 35 percent markup the same as 35 percent margin?
No, and the sheet shows both so you never confuse them. Markup is applied to your total cost floor: floor times 1.35 gives the bill rate. Margin is gross profit divided by the bill rate, so a 35 percent markup works out to about a 25.9 percent gross margin. Clients and lenders usually talk margin; recruiters usually talk markup. This calculator translates.
Why does this calculator behave differently from the original spreadsheet?
The source sheet had an Employment Type cell that did nothing: the burden formula always applied the W2 column, and a side note told you to change the cell reference by hand for 1099. This version implements the correction documented in the committed spec, so choosing 1099 actually applies the 1099 burden total. The correction is footnoted on the page.
Do I get the Excel version?
Yes. The $27 unlock includes the standalone Locum as Contract Variation workbook from Dee's How To Charge master, plus the START HERE guide tab, yours to download and keep.
More calculators
🧠
Think Tank Pricing Calculator
Price a curated leaders' think tank two ways: as a client pipeline machine and as paid recurring membership revenue.
🧭
Goals & Financial Roadmap Calculator
Reverse-engineer your 10-year revenue goal into a Year 1 target, lines of business, and monthly milestones.
📊
Budget & Revenue Simulator
Plug in your roles on billing and overhead; see your real weekly, monthly, and annual profit.