Pricing Workbook

Mindset

Directions

Access the Pricing Workbook

From the Setup OS sidebar, click into the Pricing Workbook.

Fill Out the Workbook

You’ll find detailed instructions directly on the Pricing Workbook page - read everything carefully and follow each step.

Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll be doing:

Listing your personal and business expenses
Entering key info like your weekly hours, tax rate, and financial goals to calculate your Business Income Target
Adding each of your services and the details needed to calculate your minimum viable rate for each one

This workbook does the math so you don’t have to - but only if you give it good data to work with. Take your time here.

Pricing Workbook - Determine Your Base PricesYou’re officially on your way to pricing with confidence - and making sure your system setup services are profitable, competitive, and sustainably aligned with how you actually want to work.

This calculator handles the math, so you can focus on the magic. No more late-night “Am I charging enough?” spirals. Just smart, strategic numbers that have your back.

💡 What This Calculator Does for You:

Calculates the true value of your time so your pricing stays rooted in reality
Ensures your premium system setups reflect your effort, expertise, and results
Helps you customize pricing for different clients, scopes, and levels of complexity - without starting from scratch every time

On-Page Directions

Expenses

Most entrepreneurs will have yearly expenses of AT LEAST 10k per year even without an office space. Make sure not to underestimate on this number. If anything, over estimate. Make sure to include ALL expenses that are related to your business like future materials upgrades and maintenance, insurance, license fees, website, domain, marketing materials, office supplies, your accountant, your lawyer, education and tutorials, laptop, flowcharting software, video conferencing software, project tracking software, and even all the things you may not even know you need yet. If you think you don't need this stuff now, don't worry, you will.

Toggle between Personal, Business, or All using the tabs at the top.
You may add more items.
Fill in the monthly cost OR annual cost for each item. Do not fill in both. The total will automatically calculate in the Final Annual Cost column.
Update the Percent Personal / Percent Business as needed. When you update one, the other will do the math to update automatically (it may take a few seconds).

Even if you don't actually have to pay 100% of your expenses from this business (like if you have a partner or another source of income), you should still input ALL expenses.

When you don't need this service to cover as much of your costs, it means you should WORK less, not CHARGE less.

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Calculations

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Fill in:

Federal Income Tax Rate
State Income Tax Rate
Contingency: This is the amount you want to make sure you have set aside for business emergencies, customer refunds, and other unexpected expenses. Best practice suggests at least 10%.
Hours Per Week: This is how many hours you will realistically be able to work per week in your business.
Weeks Vacation Per Year: Take into account sick time, holidays, vacations, and time you just don’t want to work.
VA Hourly Rate: This is how much you pay your Virtual Assistant. ****
- EVEN IF YOU DO NOT PAY AN ASSISTANT, THERE MUST BE A VALUE HERE. This is used later to calculate the value of time that you save your clients. If you do not have a VA, leave it at $25, it will not affect your minimum hourly rate.
Other Income: Got a second income stream in the mix - like a day job, a partner’s paycheck, or another biz bringing in revenue? Add it here.
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Just because you have another income stream (hey, sugar daddy! hey, day job!), doesn’t mean you should charge less.
Let it reduce your workload, not your worth. This calculator adjusts your annual income target - but your rates? Those stay rooted in value.
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FYI

Billable Hours Per Year: This assumes that 20% of the hours you work per week needs to be on admin in your own business, not on client work.
Business Income Target: This is how much your business needs to bring in each year to cover your business expenses, the portion of your personal expenses not covered by other income, plus taxes and contingency.
- It’s your baseline revenue target - the number that keeps the lights on, the software paid, and your life funded (without stress or spreadsheets at midnight).
Minimum Hourly Rate: This is how much you need to earn per billable hour to earn the income needed. This is used in the next section to determine your minimum
You can update this each year. To do so, duplicate the existing record and name the NEW duplicate with the PAST year. Always keep the “Current Projections” line current.

Services

This is where you’ll list all the services you offer and input the key details to generate a suggested minimum quote for each one.

The Playbook is designed to help you custom-quote every Done-For-You project with precision - but you can also use this space to price out flat-fee offers (like Strategy Sessions or VIP Days) to make sure they still align with your income goals and capacity.

Because whether it’s custom or consistent, your pricing should be rooted in strategy - not guesswork.

Services - Fill In:

Client Services: This is the average number of services your typical clients offer. It’s the foundation for everything that follows - especially how you estimate your time.
- For Done-For-You Dubsado builds, charging per service is a smart move. It’s the most accurate way to reflect the actual effort involved. You can’t predict the exact number of forms, emails, schedulers, or workflows - because every client’s business is different.
- But one thing is always true: the more services, the more complexity. And your pricing should scale accordingly.
My Min Hours Per Project: The minimum hours you (yourself) take to deliver this service with excellence. Be honest - future you will thank you. For a DFY Setup, this is probably at least 15-20 hours IF you’re really experienced. If you’re newer, it’s probably more than that.
VA Min Hours Per Project: If you have a VA, estimate how many hours they'll need per project. No VA? Just enter 0 .
Est. Projects Per Year: How many of these projects do you realistically plan to book in a year? This helps with revenue projections and capacity planning.
Non-VA Costs Per Project: Any per-project costs not tied to your time. Think: software seats, Slack channels, extra tools, client gifts - whatever makes the magic happen.
Per Extra User: Dubsado setups get more complex with additional users (think: email signatures, schedulers, training time). I recommend charging at least $300 per additional user to account for that added lift.
Avg Annual Hours Saved: Estimate how many hours your typical client will save over a year thanks to this setup.
- Used the OG Dubsado Workflow Builder? Grab the average from a few ROI reports.
- Didn’t use it? Cait’s average is ~380 hours saved per client. A safe estimate for Done-For-You builds is 250+ hours per year.
Avg Annual Money Saved: No need to enter this - it's calculated for you based on the hours saved and the VA hourly rate you entered in the Calculations section. You'll need this number in the next step.
% Saved to Charge: This field lets you charge based on the value you create, not just the time you spend. Specifically: what percentage of the money you save your client do you want to factor into your pricing? The template defaults to a conservative 10%, but here’s how to adjust:
- 10–15% → Solid starting point for standard services and value-based pricing.
- 20–30% → More aligned for premium services, expert-level strategy, or high-impact savings.
- Think about your positioning: are you a plug-and-play service or a high-converting secret weapon? Price accordingly.
  The goal isn’t to grab all the savings - it’s to reflect your impact and keep it a win-win for the client.
Minimum Investment: This final number combines your time, team, costs, and client value to calculate the minimum you should be charging for this service.

This is your workbook of goals - aka, your business reality check (but empowering).

You’re not just pricing in a vacuum - you’re mapping what it’ll actually take to hit your income goals without overloading your calendar.

Expected Income Tab:
This checks if your pricing + project count will actually get you to your Business Income Target. It compares:
- Your Estimated Income (based on your minimum investment × number of projects)
- Your Business Income Goal for the year
  👉 If your Estimated Income is too low, you can play with either how many projects you book or what you charge to find the balance that feels aligned and sustainable.
  Workload Tab:
  This helps you see if the work you're planning is sustainable.
  It calculates:
- How many hours you need per project
- How many projects you’re planning
- How that adds up across the year
  👉 If your Estimated Annual Hours are higher than your Billable Hours Per Year, you're setting yourself up to sprint a marathon in sandals. It’s your cue to adjust either your pricing, your capacity, or your expectations.

Pricing Mindset Reminder:

You’re not just saving your clients money - you’re saving them from missed opportunities, broken systems, and burnout.

Your pricing should reflect the actual value of what you bring: clarity, confidence, consistency, and time they can’t get back.

You deserve pricing that honors your brilliance and keeps your business sustainable.

This isn’t about charging more just to charge more. It’s about owning the transformation you create - and being unapologetically aligned with the value you provide.

Once you’ve completed this workbook, you can start custom quoting projects!

Video Transcript

0:00 Hey, so in this video, I want to talk to you a little bit about pricing. So, um, I have included a pricing workbook in the set up OS. 0:10 And that's for a couple of reasons. Number one, I used to make this as a Google sheet, um, and so I wanted to bring it into the fold because what this allows you to do is custom quote each individual done for you project, based on a number of factors that are specific to your business but then also specific 0:31 to each of your clients. So it doesn't make sense for you need for you to need to go into like this Google sheet to fill in these details and then also go put them in Notion. 0:42 So now it will all just be in one place which is what makes the most sense. But the other reason is because I feel really strongly about pricing. 0:51 And I have from the start. And so I think that this is something I just want to continue to make a key part of my message, which is that you need to charge what you are worth. 1:02 If you are doingips out of setups, you are not just a virtual assistant, you are not a tech VA, you are literally automating people, you are duplicating, there will be to serve people. 1:13 And you are doing it on a very short timeline. And you're doing it with amazing expertise, especially if you're using the set-up OS. 1:21 So you need to be charging accordingly. And a lot of times the, I think I call it pushback, but the the hesitations I get from people when they're trying to establish their pricing is, but this isn't the only service I offer or, but I have, you know, a spouse who's also bringing in money. 1:39 So I don't need it to cover all of my expenses. And the pricing workbook asks you to put in all of your expenses. 1:47 And so that's kind of where those questions come from. And so really in this video, I just want to talk to you about why it doesn't matter. 1:54 It doesn't matter if you do other services. It doesn't matter if you have a whole other business. It doesn't matter if you have a partner, a roommate, whatever. 2:01 You need to be putting in all of your expenses because the fact that you have other income just makes your time more valuable. 2:11 So if you were to think of this like working at Starbucks, working at having a part-time job at Starbucks doesn't change your wage just because you may have a 9-to-5. 2:22 It doesn't change your wage just because your partner has a job. It's literally not even a part of the consideration. 2:33 And so what you need to be doing is entering in all of your expenses and all of the time that you're willing to work and what this is going to do is give you a minimum hourly rate that you should be charging. 2:45 And there is a spot in there for you to put in other income in your household or from other businesses so that you can account for the fact that you may not need to basically it's just adjusting your business income target. 2:58 So your business income target can be lower if you don't need to make as much money from it but that's not changing how much money you should be paid per hour. 3:08 And so basically it just means if you don't eat as much money from this business, you should be working less, not charging less. 3:16 And this is really important for a lot of reasons. This is really important to avoid burnout for yourself, to avoid having to work with problem clients who are always just working for the best deal, looking for the best hype for their budget that they can get. 3:31 But it's also really important to our industry because the last thing that we want to do is be driving prices down and down and down. 3:38 this is I don't want to work in an industry where it's a race to the bottom. Don't worry most likely I charge more than you, maybe not everyone watching this video, but like don't worry, there's always going to be someone more expensive, I guess is my point. 3:52 And so your price is probably not what you want to use as a why someone should book you. You want to use all the reasons that you're amazing and you want to be able to talk about why the service you offer is suitable valuable, which is why the setup OS includes things like the Workflow Winds ROI report 4:09 so that you can actually put numbers to that. You can show them how many hours you're saving them in a year. 4:14 You can show them how much money you're saving them in a year based on what they would have to pay a VA to do all of those tasks perfectly. 4:22 And we all know that even if we hired someone to do it, those tasks wouldn't be done perfectly. So it's also improving their client experience and the accuracy of everything. 4:32 So, I really just wanted to say all this to you to make sure that you are filling out the pricing workbook completely, honestly, and that you are making sure you're thinking about pricing from the right standpoint, not of how low can I get my price, but genuinely of how much is your work worth? 4:51 And what do you need in order to be successful in your business? So go ahead and do this activity, even if you've done it previously on the previous Google I recommend kind of starting from scratch, you can take some numbers from the spreadsheet if you want, but this one is more advanced than the old 5:07 one, it takes more into account. And so I do recommend going ahead and starting. And this is going to help you with not only custom quoting all of your individuals and for you projects, but this one is also unique in that it allows you to set up all of your services and customize based on, you know, 5:24 how many hours those other services take you and whatever other factors are contributing to that. So you can get some custom base prices for what your items are, for your services that don't change price per client. 5:38 So a strategy session or an audit or whatever, you can put all those in and get an accurate reflection of how much you really should be charging for all of those services. 5:46 So if you ever wanna discuss this more, I highly encourage you to make a post in the Facebook group. Always happy to discuss this with you and I am so excited to see what the pricing workbook spits out for you and how this revolutionizes your quoting process.