How to calculate what your working hour is really worth

Most beauty professionals know their price list by heart. Far fewer know what they actually earn per working hour once material costs and real time are factored in.

Why your price list doesn't tell the whole story

A service's price is only half the picture. The other half is what that service costs you to deliver — materials, time, and sometimes the gaps between clients.

The formula worth knowing

Profit per working hour breaks down like this:

• Profit = service price − material cost
• Profit per hour = profit ÷ time spent on the service (in hours)

For example, a €45 service using €8 of materials and taking 1.5 hours works out to (45 − 8) ÷ 1.5 = €24.67 per hour.

Why this matters more than total revenue

Two services can bring in the same amount of money while taking very different amounts of time. A faster service that uses fewer materials is often worth more — even if its listed price looks smaller.

What to do with this number

Once you know the real profit per hour for each service, you can make informed calls: which services to offer more often, which prices to revisit, and which might not be worth keeping.

CULTUS calculates this automatically for every service, based on the price, cost and duration you've already entered.