Enter what the supplier charges, how long the job takes your team, and the margin you need. Get the price to quote, what a simple markup would really have earned, and the floor price for a retainer on a shared design queue. Built by the team at Digital Polo for agencies, studios and resellers who outsource design.
Supplier $90 + your time $91 + rework $18 + pass-throughs $12
Delivers a 50% delivery margin after 3% payment fees.
An effective markup on supply of 5.0×. Healthy range: 20–30%.
| Method | Price | Profit after loaded cost | Real margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supplier × 1.5 | $135 | −$80 | -59.4% |
| Supplier × 2 | $180 | −$36 | -20.3% |
Price = fully loaded cost ÷ (1 − target margin − payment fees). Defaults reproduce the worked examples in how to price design when you outsource it. Margin here is delivery margin — before sales, admin and owner salary — so it is not profit.
The price formula is loaded cost ÷ (1 − target margin − payment fees). Loaded cost is the supplier's cost per accepted deliverable, plus your internal minutes at a loaded hourly rate, plus a rework allowance on both, plus pass-through licences and materials. Payment fees go in the denominator because they are charged on the price, not the cost.
The class presets reproduce the worked rate card in the guide — adaptation, composition, original layout and systems work — using mid-market wholesale supplier costs from our white-label design pricing benchmarks. Replace them with your own figures. One month of tracked time is worth more than any default.
What this tool does not do: it does not check your price against the market you sell into, which you should always do (our graphic design pricing guide maps the end-client ranges). It does not model cash flow from payment terms, and it treats your margin as delivery margin, not net profit. For the full method — including the seven places margin leaks after the price is set — read how to price design when you outsource it.
Related reading: how to resell graphic design services, adding a design retainer to media-only clients and how to vet a white-label design partner.
It adds up the fully loaded cost of the job — supplier cost, your internal minutes valued at your loaded hourly cost, a rework allowance on both, and any pass-through licences — then divides by one minus your target margin minus your payment fees. Payment fees sit in the denominator because they scale with the selling price, not the cost.
Because on small and mid-sized design jobs the supplier is often less than half the real cost. Briefing, QA, client feedback and project management can take as long as the design itself, and when that time is valued properly, doubling the supplier's invoice does not cover it. The comparison table makes this visible for your own numbers.
Salary plus payroll taxes and benefits plus a share of overheads such as software, equipment and space, divided by the hours actually spent on client delivery — not by 2,080. For an account manager on $65,000, that typically comes to around $75 to $95 an hour. If the owner does the account work, use what it would cost to hire someone to do it.
Between 20 and 30 per cent for most design resellers, which is an effective markup on supply of roughly three to five times. If the supplier's share rises above 35 to 40 per cent on a client, either their work has moved up a complexity class without the price following, or the account is being priced as a markup again.
The minimum monthly retainer you can charge each client when several clients share one flat-fee design queue. It splits the queue cost across the clients, adds each client's internal account time, and applies your target margin. It also shows the absolute floor — the price set by your account time alone — which no amount of queue sharing can go below.
No. Delivery margin is what remains after the supplier, your delivery time and pass-through costs. It still has to fund sales, finance, admin, non-job tools and the owner's salary. That is why targets of 50 per cent or more are sensible, and why a delivery margin in the 30s usually means a business that is only breaking even.
Digital Polo is a white-label design partner on a flat monthly fee — unlimited revisions, all source files, reseller rights and NDA on request — so the only variables left in your pricing are the ones you control.