Overhead Cost Calculator
Fixed and variable overhead allocation per product/service.
Overhead includes rent, utilities, admin, and other costs not directly tied to a single unit. Allocate overhead by labor hours, machine hours, or revenue share. This calculator helps you assign overhead to products or services for accurate costing and pricing.
Inputs
Results
Overhead per unit: $27.50
Fully loaded cost per unit: $52.50
Insights
Formula
Fixed per unit = Fixed overhead / Units Variable per unit = COGS * var% / Units (simplified) Overhead per unit = Fixed/Units + (COGS * var%)
Input Definitions
What does each input mean?
- Monthly fixed overhead
- Rent, utilities, admin—costs that stay the same regardless of output.
- Variable overhead %
- Overhead that scales with COGS (e.g., indirect materials, utilities that vary).
- Units
- Monthly production or sales volume. Fixed overhead is divided by this.
- COGS per unit
- Direct cost of goods sold per unit.
Related Calculators
What It Costs to Keep the Lights On Before You Earn a Dollar
Overhead — rent, utilities, insurance, software subscriptions, administrative salaries — is what your business spends regardless of how much revenue it generates. Understanding your overhead clearly is how you calculate the minimum revenue needed to break even, the true cost of slow months, and why profitability at low volume is so elusive. This calculator helps you itemize and total your overhead so it stops being a vague number.
It’s most useful when you’re setting annual budgets, evaluating whether a business expansion would pay for itself, or deciding whether to move to a larger space or hire additional staff. Every revenue dollar you earn has to cover overhead before it counts as profit — knowing that number changes how you think about pricing and growth.