The tool, in your browser
The crew pay sheet
Your burden and your crew price list, typed once. Then one card per roof you already finished — squares, layers, the days you priced it at and the days it really took. The page prices the labor twice, hourly with the burden on top and by the square with the extras added, and then prints the line the totals hide: what one more day on that roof costs you under each deal. By the square it is zero. That is the whole argument.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This sheet only knows about this browser. Nothing you type is sent to us and nothing syncs, so the phone and the office computer each keep their own copy — and this one fills up with what you pay your men, so anyone who opens this page on that computer can read it. Clearing your browsing data wipes it, and a new phone won’t bring it along. Keep the-crew-pay-sheet.xlsx on the computer at the office if the numbers have to last.
The sheet fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
What you actually read
Read the drag line, not the totals.
On a job that went the way you priced it, the two totals land close together. They always do. The line that decides anything is the one underneath: what one more day costs you. Paid by the square it is zero — the roof pays what it pays and the crew carries the slow day. Paid hourly it is four men times nine hours times a loaded wage, every day the job runs long, and the crew is not wrong to let it.
Which is why the sheet asks for two day counts and not one. The gap between what you priced and what it took, on the hourly side, is money you have been paying without a line item. Run it again on a roof that went badly — that is where hourly quietly ate the margin.
Before you change how you pay anybody
Four things this page does not know.
- Whether the roof passed. A crew paid for speed will find speed anywhere, including in the valley detail. Per-square pay only works with an inspection that holds and money that waits on it — two gates, then the check.
- What your square price should be. It prices the roof at the rate you typed. Writing that rate down once, with a line for every thing that isn’t standard, is the crew price list — not a negotiation you have in every driveway.
- Your real burden. Payroll taxes plus comp, as a percentage of wages, and the comp half of it moves with your mod and your class codes. The number that prices your bids works that out off your own policy instead of a rule of thumb.
- Whether the job made money. This is the labor line and nothing else — no material, no overhead, no supplement. The job’s report card grades the finished job.
How it gets used
- Fill in the four boxes up top once. Burden as a percentage — type 30, not 0.30 — and the three rates off your crew price list. Every card waits on them, and they don’t change from roof to roof.
- Use a roof you already closed. Squares off the takeoff, decimals and all — the takeoff sheet — never off the job’s dollars. Days off the timesheets or the board, not off memory.
- Answer the payroll question on every card. Your own crew paid by the square still carries burden; a sub invoices you and carries his own. Leave it unanswered and the card stays out of the totals on purpose.
- Type the days it should have taken honestly. The days you priced it at, not the days you wish it had taken. Hours, not days builds that number off your own timesheets instead of a feeling.
- Add the roofs that went badly. One good job proves nothing — the totals are always close on those. Three roofs that ran long is the argument, and the page adds them up for you.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same sheet as a spreadsheet
the-crew-pay-sheet.xlsx is this sheet as a spreadsheet — same burden switch, same square rate, same drag line — for the computer at the office. Two differences in the page’s favour: the file prices one roof and tells you to run it again on a roof that went badly, where here every roof gets its own card and they add up; and the four numbers that never change from job to job are typed once at the top instead of retyped on every copy of the file. Two the other way: the file is a real file, so it survives a cleared browser and prints for a conversation with a foreman — and it shows every formula in the cell beside the answer, which is what settles an argument about where a number came from. One thing both refuse: a roof logged as finishing sooner than you priced it stops the answer on the file and on this page alike, because that is nearly always the wrong box. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M16-01 Pay by the Hour and You Bought the Day. Pay by the Square and You Bought the Roof. — is where the math comes from, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.