📋 SOW & Project-Based Staffing Pricing Calculator
Statement of work staffing means you are not filling seats, you are pricing an entire project with a defined deliverable. This calculator, straight from Dee's How To Charge workbook, quotes it both ways: Fixed Price (one number, your risk, so the quote carries a buffer and a target margin) and Time and Materials (a five-role grid billed at pay times burden times a 1.35 markup). It puts both models side by side with break-even hours, then stress-tests the SOW Account Executive's milestone-split commission and the Delivery Manager's completion and efficiency bonuses against per-project gross profit. Run your numbers once free; the $27 one-time unlock keeps every section live forever and includes the Excel workbook.
Section 1 · Fixed price SOW
You quote ONE number and the client pays it regardless of actual hours. Higher risk for your agency, higher margin when you scope it well. Build the risk buffer into the quote.
Your best estimate of total delivery hours across the team.
Weighted average fully loaded cost per worker hour.
10% to 20% typical. Protects you if scope creeps.
What % of the quote should be your gross profit.
Section 2 · Time & materials (up to 5 roles)
Client pays for actual hours worked at agreed bill rates. The sheet builds each bill rate as pay x (1 + burden) x 1.35 markup. Scope changes are billed, not absorbed.
Picking a state loads planning defaults into all five role burden % fields (FICA, FUTA, effective SUI at each role's pay, and a typical workers comp band).
Section 4 · Role 1: SOW Account Executive
Builds the SOW, prices the engagement, and closes the contract. Commission is milestone-based: paying everything at signing on a 6-month project exposes you to a loss.
Enter $0 for 1099. Market range: $60,000 to $85,000 for SOW/project staffing AEs.
Always comp on GP, not revenue. W2: 8% to 12%. 1099: 12% to 18%.
Typical: 40% to 50%. The rest is held for milestones.
Typical: 25% to 35%.
Typical: 20% to 25%. The quality gate: released only when the client signs off.
Lower rate on approved change orders. Range: 5% to 10%.
SOW deals take 30 to 90 days to close; one per month is solid.
Enter 0 if not tracking.
Range: $1,500 to $8,000 depending on scope.
Section 4 · Role 2: Project Delivery Manager
Staffs the SOW team, manages delivery, and tracks hours and milestones. Base-heavy comp plus a completion bonus and a scope efficiency bonus on fixed price work.
Market range: $52,000 to $72,000; higher for technical SOW.
Paid per project delivered on time and in scope. Range: $250 to $1,000.
On fixed price work, the PDM earns this % of hours saved x blended cost. Range: 8% to 15%.
One PDM can typically handle 2 to 4 concurrent projects.
Estimated 500, delivered in 475? That is 25 saved. Enter 0 if not tracking.
Estimates for planning, not financial advice. Buffer, margin, commission, and salary ranges are the workbook's guidance; your projects, your market, and your state decide the real numbers.
Does this resonate?
Projects pay for outcomes. Build the business that delivers them.
If quoting whole projects instead of filling single seats sounds like your kind of business, the platform can turn it into a real plan: positioning, scoping templates in plain language, and the week-by-week path from first SOW conversation to signed contract.
Build my launch plan free →Good questions about this math
How does SOW staffing pricing differ from regular staffing markup?
In statement of work staffing the client pays for an outcome, not headcount. You quote the whole project, staff the whole team, and own delivery. The pricing math starts from your blended hourly cost to deliver, adds a risk buffer for scope creep, and grosses up by your target margin: quote = buffered cost divided by (1 minus target margin).
Fixed price vs time and materials: which should I propose?
Fixed price is easier for the client to budget and pays a higher margin when you scope tightly, but you carry the overrun risk. Time and materials bills actual hours at agreed rates, so scope changes are billed instead of absorbed. The workbook's pro tip: when scope is unclear, propose T&M with a not-to-exceed cap so the client gets cost certainty and you get protection.
What are typical project based staffing rates in the T&M model?
The sheet's grid builds each role's bill rate as pay times (1 plus burden) times a 1.35 markup, so a $25 per hour role at 15 percent burden bills at about $38.81. Five roles at 40 hours a week for 8 weeks totals roughly $62,100 of revenue at a 25.9 percent margin in the default scenario; swap in your own roles and rates to see yours.
Why is SOW commission released in milestones?
Because a fixed price project that cancels mid-engagement is a partial loss, and if the AE already took 100 percent of commission at signing, you absorbed all of it. The sheet splits the commission pool across signing (typically 40 to 50 percent), project midpoint, and client-accepted completion, with the final release acting as the quality gate.
What are break-even hours on a fixed price SOW?
Your quote divided by your blended hourly cost: the number of delivered hours at which the project stops making money. The workbook says to know this number before kickoff and make sure your delivery manager knows it too; the scope efficiency bonus pays them a share of every hour they bring the project in under estimate.
Do I get the Excel version?
Yes. The $27 unlock includes the standalone SOW & Project-Based Staffing workbook (the exact tab from Dee's How To Charge master, with every formula live) plus the START HERE guide tab, yours to download and keep.
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