Breakeven Calculator: Products & Services — your results
Breakeven Calculator: Products & Services
Work out how much revenue your business needs to cover its costs — whether you sell one product, one service, or a mix of several. Fixed overheads are shared across every product and service in proportion to how much each actually sells, giving one blended breakeven figure. You can also flip the calculation around to solve for the price or day rate you need to charge, and check your breakeven volume against the capacity you can realistically deliver. Built by Rule29, business accountants and advisers to SMEs across Hull and East Yorkshire.
About your business
All the figures you enter below — overheads and volumes — should be for this same period.
Find the sales volume you need at your current prices, or flip it around to find the price or day rate you need to charge at a volume you can actually deliver.
Leave at £0 to solve for breakeven, or enter the profit or income you want on top of covering overheads.
Fixed overheads per month
Shared across your whole business — the same regardless of which tab above you're viewing.
Permanent staff who aren't paid per unit or per job — not the direct labour costed against a product/service below.
The wage you want to pay yourself. It's the most commonly forgotten cost in a DIY breakeven sum — leaving it out understates what your business actually needs to earn.
Utilities, marketing retainers, loan repayments, software — anything that doesn't change with how much you sell.
Your products
Your inputs
Your sales mix (share of revenue)
Line-by-line breakdown
| Product / service | Price | Variable cost | Contribution | CM % | Expected volume | Expected revenue | Sales mix | Breakeven volume |
|---|
Total revenue vs total cost
How this calculator works
Breakeven is the point where your revenue exactly covers your costs — no profit, no loss. Every product or service you sell earns a contribution: its selling price minus the variable costs of making or delivering it (materials, direct labour, packaging, commission). That contribution goes towards paying your fixed overheads — rent, permanent salaries, insurance, and everything else that doesn't change with volume — and once those are covered, every further pound of contribution is profit.
When you sell more than one product or service, each one usually has a different contribution margin. This calculator blends them using the standard composite unit method: it works out what share of your total revenue each line represents (based on the volumes you enter), then weights each line's contribution margin by that share to get one blended contribution margin ratio for the whole business. Your breakeven revenue is simply fixed overheads divided by that blended ratio — and the breakeven volume shown for each line is its share of that breakeven revenue, at its own price.
Change your sales mix — sell proportionally more of your higher-margin line — and the blended breakeven moves too, even if nothing else changes. That's one of the most useful things this kind of analysis shows: which of your products or services is actually carrying the business.
Switch "What do you want to work out?" to Price to charge and the calculator runs the same maths in reverse: tell it which line to solve for and the volume you can realistically sell or deliver, and it works out the exact price or day rate that line needs to charge to break even — or to hit a target profit you set. Every other line keeps its own manually entered price, so this works whether you're pricing your only service or one line in a wider range.
What breakeven analysis doesn't tell you
Breakeven is a powerful planning tool, but it rests on a few simplifying assumptions worth keeping in mind:
- Costs don't always stay fixed or variable in a straight line. Take on enough extra volume and you may need another member of staff, a bigger unit, or a second premises — a "step" in fixed costs this model doesn't anticipate.
- It ignores timing. Breakeven tells you the revenue level you need over the period, not when the cash actually lands — a business can be above breakeven on paper and still run into a cash flow squeeze.
- Your sales mix rarely stays constant. Seasonal demand, a new competitor, or a shift in what customers are buying all change the blended figure — it's worth re-running this periodically, not treating it as a one-off number.
- Tax isn't in the model. Figures here are pre-tax; corporation tax reduces the profit that's actually left once you're above breakeven.
Fixed vs variable costs — and why the split matters
Variable costs move directly with each sale — the materials in a product, the direct labour or subcontractor time on a job, packaging, delivery, or a sales commission. Get these right per unit and the contribution margin calculation looks after itself.
Fixed overheads are everything else — the costs you'd still have to pay even if you sold nothing this month. Permanent staff on a salary (as opposed to staff paid per job or per hour, which are a variable cost) usually belong here, along with rent, insurance, software subscriptions, and loan repayments.
The most common mistake in a DIY breakeven calculation is miscategorising staff costs — treating a salaried team member as a variable cost, or a piece-rate contractor as fixed. Both distort the contribution margin and understate or overstate how much volume you actually need to break even.
Supporting businesses across Hull and East Yorkshire
Rule29 works with SMEs and entrepreneurs across Hull and East Yorkshire on the numbers behind pricing, costing and growth — including breakeven and margin analysis across a full product or service range. This calculator is a starting point; for a breakeven model built around your actual cost base and sales mix, we're happy to talk it through.
Not sure your pricing is covering its costs?
Get in touch with Rule29 for advice tailored to your business — visit rule29.co.uk or speak to your usual Rule29 contact.
Breakeven calculator FAQs
What is a breakeven point?
It's the level of sales revenue (or volume) at which your total contribution exactly equals your fixed overheads — you're neither making a profit nor a loss. Sell more than that and every extra pound of contribution is profit; sell less and you're making a loss.
How is breakeven calculated when I sell more than one product or service?
Each product or service has its own contribution margin. This calculator blends them by weighting each one's margin by its share of your total revenue (based on the volumes you enter), giving one overall blended contribution margin ratio. Breakeven revenue is then your fixed overheads divided by that blended ratio.
What's the difference between fixed and variable costs?
Variable costs change directly with each sale — materials, direct labour, packaging, commission. Fixed overheads stay roughly the same regardless of volume — rent, permanent salaries, insurance, subscriptions. Getting this split right is the single biggest factor in an accurate breakeven figure.
What is contribution margin?
It's what's left from a sale after variable costs — selling price minus variable cost per unit — either as a £ amount per unit or as a % of the selling price. It's the amount each sale contributes towards fixed overheads, and then profit once those are covered.
What is margin of safety?
The gap between your current (or expected) revenue and your breakeven revenue, usually shown as a percentage of current revenue. A higher margin of safety means revenue could fall further before you'd start making a loss.
Can I use this if my business sells services, not physical products?
Yes — each line lets you choose whether it's product-based (with a materials/COGS cost per unit) or service-based (with a direct labour or delivery cost per hour or job). You can mix both types in the same calculation.
Does this account for VAT or corporation tax?
No — figures are shown before tax. Corporation tax reduces the profit left over once you're trading above breakeven, and VAT is generally excluded on the assumption it's recovered in full. Talk to Rule29 if you want a post-tax view.
Is this breakeven calculator accurate for my business?
It's built on standard cost-volume-profit and composite breakeven methodology, but it can't know about costs that step up at higher volumes, seasonal swings, or how you've actually categorised your own costs. Treat it as a strong planning tool, and talk to Rule29 for an analysis built around your real numbers.
How do I work out the day rate I need to charge as a contractor?
Switch "What do you want to work out?" to Price to charge, choose your line, and enter the number of days or hours you can realistically bill in the period. The calculator solves for the exact rate that line needs to charge to cover your overheads — including your own wage, if you've entered it — or to hit a target income you set.
What does the capacity check do?
It compares the volume you'd need to sell to break even against what you can realistically deliver — your available hours or production capacity, multiplied by a utilisation or yield rate that allows for travel, admin, downtime or waste. If your breakeven need is higher than that realistic capacity, no amount of demand will get you there without changing your price, costs, or capacity itself. It's optional per line — leave capacity at 0 to skip it.
Why does the calculator ask me to enter my own salary?
Because it's the cost small business owners most often leave out. If you only cost in your employees' wages and treat whatever's left as "profit", your breakeven figure understates what the business actually needs to earn for you to be paid properly. Enter what you want to pay yourself under "Owner's salary / drawings" and it's treated as a fixed overhead like any other.