Opora Intelligence · Margin Sentinel
Is your bid priced right?
Enter your bid and get an instant comparison against BLS wage data, regional benchmarks, and a clear verdict.
Free to use today — no subscription
Next: rebuild the proposal at a healthier price
Re-price the bid → Bid DrafterMargin Analysis — Preview
Section 1 of 4
Implied Labor Rate vs BLS
Your implied rate
$25.40/hr
BLS TX median
$15.87/hr
Verdict: Overbid — your implied labor rate of $25.40/hr is 60% above the BLS TX median of $15.87/hr. Review crew size and hours estimate.
Benchmark Comparison
Verdict & Alerts
Recommendations
See what a job actually keeps after labor, supplies, and overhead, not what the top-line price pretends. You enter the bid price and your real costs, and it shows the margin in dollars and percent. This is the difference between busy and profitable.
Instruction
- Enter monthly bid total and cleanable square footage.
- Set building type and state (state improves BLS OEWS resolution).
- Enter workers, hours per worker per week, wage rate, and overhead %.
- Generate the verdict. Copy, save, or PDF. If Underbid, fix hours or rate before Bid Drafter goes out.
Worked example
A $4,900/month office bid. Labor is 70 hours at a $19 loaded wage ($1,330), supplies $220, overhead allocation $600.
Total cost near $2,150, leaving about $2,750 gross, roughly 56%. Bump the loaded wage to $24 and the margin drops under 50%, which tells you how thin the raise cushion is.
What's under the hood
- Margin is only as honest as your loaded labor number. Use fully burdened wage (taxes, workers' comp, insurance), not base pay.
- Overhead is an allocation you enter; it does not guess your rent, admin, or truck costs.
- It calculates from your inputs and will not backfill a cost you leave blank, so a missing supplies line inflates the margin.
- No market data here. This is your job's math, not a benchmark against competitors.
When this breaks
- Plugging in base hourly wage instead of loaded cost overstates margin by 20 to 30 percent.
- Forgetting overhead makes a break-even account look profitable.
- Using estimated hours that ignore travel and setup, so the real job runs longer and eats the margin.
Questions operators ask
- What counts as loaded labor cost?
- Base wage plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, unemployment, and any benefits. If you only enter base pay, the margin is fiction.
- Where do I get overhead per account?
- Take annual overhead, divide across your accounts by revenue or hours, and enter that slice. Rough is fine; zero is not.
- Can it check a bid before I send it?
- Yes. Send the Bid Drafter breakdown here first. If the margin is under your floor, fix the price before the client sees it.
- What margin should I target?
- That is your call by market and account type. The tool shows the number; your floor policy decides if it passes.
- Does it track margin over time?
- It calculates the scenario you enter. For trend tracking across months, keep your own record or re-run per period.
- What if labor hours are just a guess?
- Then the margin is a guess. Use a walkthrough or production-rate estimate for hours before you trust the percentage.