Project Profit Calculator
Did your fixed-fee project actually pay? Enter the fee, hours, and expenses. We'll tell you your real effective hourly rate — and whether it hit your target.
Effective rate
$87/hr
Net revenue
$4,800
fee − $200 expenses
vs target
-$13/hr
87% of target
Hours over estimate
15.0
$1,500 unbilled at target rate
Close, but not quite at target.
You earned $87/hr against a $100/hr target — about 87% of where you wanted to be. If this is a one-off, it is fine. If it is a pattern across multiple projects, look at: scoping accuracy (you went 15 hours over estimate), unbillable work mixed in, or quoted fees that anchor too low.
Stop guessing — track every project automatically
Flowly logs every hour against the project you're working on. At the end of a fixed-fee engagement, you get the real numbers — not a guess reconstructed from memory.
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Why fixed-fee projects quietly destroy freelancer margins
Fixed-fee projects look great on paper: the client agrees to a number, you deliver, you invoice. No hourly haggling. The problem is that nobody tracks actual hours, so the project's profitability stays invisible. A "$5,000, two-week" project that turns into "$5,000, three-and-a-half weeks" looked profitable when quoted and was a 40% margin haircut by the end.
The fix is simple in concept and brutal in practice: track every hour you spend on the project, including admin, calls, and revisions. Compare actual hours to your estimate at the end. Patterns emerge within three or four projects — clients who always run 30% over, categories of work you systematically underestimate, scopes that drift because the contract was vague.
How to use the result
- If you hit target: raise the next quote by 10 to 20%.
- If you are 80 to 100% of target: review where the hours leaked, tighten the scope.
- If you are under 80%: this is a money-losing project type — either re-price aggressively or stop accepting these.