Photographer Pricing Calculator + Cost of Doing Business

Most pricing sheets start from a single shoot. This calculator starts from the year: everything it costs to be a photographer for twelve months, divided by the sessions you can actually bill, plus the salary you typed and your own tax & buffer percentage — worked down to the rate one session has to carry.

One thing it is not: our Photographer Session Pricing + Expense Tracker prices individual sessions from the hours and costs of each shoot — this calculator works the other way, starting from your annual cost of doing business and working down to the session rate your year has to carry. The two share no sample figures.

The sample year costs $16,740.00, and the sheet prints its two biggest lines from its own numbers: gear at $7,250.00 and insurance at $1,950.00. Over 60 billable sessions the CODB is $279.00 a session; the typed $52,000.00 target salary adds $866.67; the subtotal of $1,145.67 with the 15% example tax & buffer gives a required session price of $1,317.52 — an example calculation from typed figures, labelled as such on the sheet, never a recommendation. The package check is blunt about the sample’s $950.00 package: BELOW the example required price, by $367.52. Drop the typed sessions to 45 and the same arithmetic prints $1,756.69 — both states are shown, so a quieter year is priced before it happens, not after.

HOW IT WORKS
– ‘Cost of Doing Business’: your annual cost lines as typed rows — gear, insurance, software, studio/space, marketing, vehicle, education, other — totalled, with the two biggest lines printed by name.
– ‘Rate Build & Packages’: CODB per session, salary per session, subtotal, your typed tax & buffer %, and the required session price as pure arithmetic on your typed inputs.
– The package check: up to 3 of your own package prices, each printed ABOVE or BELOW the example required price with the exact difference, plus a what-if line for a quieter year.

WHAT’S INSIDE
– A full annual CODB block with the two biggest cost lines printed
– A rate build from sessions-per-year down to a required session price (example calculation)
– A package check that flags a below-the-line package plainly (sample: $950.00 vs $1,317.52)
– A what-if sessions figure so a quieter year reprices visibly (sample: 45 sessions, $1,756.69)
– Plus the standard Expense Log, zero-based Monthly Budget, Dashboard and Monthly Summary tabs

Every cost, salary figure and percentage in this workbook is an example setting you type. The sheet does arithmetic on your numbers only — it is not tax advice and not pricing advice, and it never tells you what to charge.

How it works: the seven tabs are Start Here (your settings + step-by-step), the two feature tabs, Expense Log, Monthly Budget (zero-based), Dashboard and Monthly Summary. Yellow cells are the only places you type — every yellow value is your own entry. Formula cells are locked (password: sheetdaily, disclosed on the Start Here tab) and every formula is error-wrapped, so an untouched sheet reads blank instead of showing error codes. Instant download, ready for Excel and Google Sheets.

A note on the sample data: every price and date in this workbook is example data, typed in by hand to show you how the sheet behaves. Replace it with your own.