Photographer Session Pricing + Expense Tracker

Your wedding pays beautifully. Your newborn session — 3 hours shooting, 4 hours editing, $47 of props and travel for a $550 fee — pays $71.86 an hour against your $95 target. This tracker prices photography the way sessions actually happen: shoot hours + editing hours + the session’s own gear, props and travel costs, against the fee. The pre-filled sample runs 8 sessions: $6,600 in fees, $635 of session costs, $5,965 kept — a blended $101.10/hr, with 3 of the 8 sessions quietly below target. Then the Package Builder prices your Mini, Classic, Premium, Wedding and Brand tiers off the same real numbers, so a package price is a decision, not a guess.

What it does for you:
– Effective $/hr per session, editing included: the hours behind the computer count the same as the hours behind the camera — that is where photography rates live or die.
– Session costs stay attached to the session: gear hire, props and travel are logged per shoot, so the “profitable” session that needed $275 of extras shows its real margin (90.5% on the sample wedding, and its real rate).
– Know your gap to target pricing: the tab totals the fees you would need at your target rate ($6,240 on the sample) against what you charged ($6,600 — $360 ahead), and counts the sessions below target.
– Packages priced off evidence: each tier’s shoot + editing hours and direct costs are priced at your target rate before you set the price — Mini earns $14.50 of true profit at $175, Wedding Essentials $470 at $2,400.
– The business around the sessions is covered too: full expense log with a Gear & Props category, a zero-based monthly budget, and a Dashboard gear fund (5% of fees = $330 on the sample) so replacements stop being surprises.

What’s inside (.xlsx, works in Excel AND Google Sheets):
– Start Here — plain-English setup + your settings (target rate for your time, gear fund %)
– Session Pricing — 12 session rows: type, shoot hrs, editing hrs, gear/props, travel → earnings, margin %, effective $/hr
– Package Builder — 6 package tiers priced from hours + costs at your target rate, with profit and effective rate per tier
– Expense Log — business spending, categorized (gear, studio, travel, insurance…)
– Monthly Budget — zero-based, Budget vs Actual fills itself
– Dashboard — fees, earnings, blended rate and gear fund on one screen
– Monthly Summary — spending by month, Jan–Dec

Instant download. Yellow cells are yours to type in; every formula cell is locked (password sheetdaily, shown in Start Here) so nothing breaks by accident. Sample sessions and packages are pre-filled so you can see the math working — replace them with your own.