Guides for closet company owners
By the ClosetCRM team · November 2026
Markup is profit as a share of your cost. Margin is profit as a share of the price. A 50% markup is only a 33% margin. If you want to keep 40% of every job and you add 40% to your costs, you are keeping 28.6%. Use the calculator to convert one to the other.
A walk-in costs you $2,400 in materials, hardware and labor. You want a 40% margin.
| Add 40% to cost (wrong) | Divide by 0.60 (right) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3,360 | $4,000 |
| Profit on the job | $960 | $1,600 |
| Margin you actually keep | 28.6% | 40% |
That is $640 lost on one closet. At 200 jobs a year, the same mistake is $128,000.
| Markup on cost | Margin on price | To get this margin, multiply cost by |
|---|---|---|
| 25% | 20% | 1.25 |
| 43% | 30% | 1.43 |
| 50% | 33.3% | 1.50 |
| 67% | 40% | 1.67 |
| 82% | 45% | 1.82 |
| 100% | 50% | 2.00 |
| 150% | 60% | 2.50 |
Your price list holds the selling price, and each item can carry what it costs you. Quotes are built from the list, so the multiplier is applied once, the same way, on every job.
Each job can show what you quoted, what you spent and the margin left, as supplier orders and bills come in. You see a job going over budget while there is still time to do something about it.
Ask the AI assistant which jobs are making money.
It depends on the margin you need. To keep 40% to 50% of the price, you need a markup of about 67% to 100% on your job costs.
No. A 50% markup on cost is a 33.3% margin on price. To keep a 50% margin you need a 100% markup, which means doubling your cost.
Because overhead and profit are paid from margin. If you price with markup but plan with margin, every job earns less than you think it does.
Yes. Labor carries the same overhead as materials. Apply the same margin to the whole job cost, not just the parts.