Calculator
Custom commission quote calculator
Enter the weight, the metal cost, the stones and the hours, and see the quote and the deposit before you say a number out loud.
Free tools
Free calculators for commission pricing and bench capacity
Both of these answer questions designers usually settle by feel, and feel is what leaves a month of setting work unpaid.
The first calculator builds a commission price the way a quote should be built, from finished metal weight and the current cost per gram, through casting loss, stone cost and the hours the bench work genuinely takes. Change one input and watch which line moves. That alone tends to correct a shop rate that has not been raised since the studio opened.
The second calculator works on time rather than money. Consultations, sourcing calls, CAD revisions, packing and shipping all come out of the same week as the bench work, and the gap between studio hours and billable hours is where most underpricing starts. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed unless you ask for it. Use them, then use the numbers on your next quote.
Calculator
Billable bench hours and commission capacity calculator
Studio hours are not bench hours, and the difference decides whether your shop rate covers the year or only the part of it a client pays for.
Working document
The commission intake and stage approval checklist
Every commission dispute a designer ever has traces back to something on this list that nobody wrote down.
Why the bench arithmetic is open to anyone
Most designers already do this math, usually on the back of a job envelope between a consultation and a casting pickup. Finished weight times cost per gram, a casting loss figure someone quoted at a workshop years ago, a center stone at whatever the supplier said on Tuesday, and bench hours counted from memory once the setting is done. None of that is worth an email address. It is arithmetic, so both calculators run in the browser, keep nothing and ask you for nothing.
They are worth something on their own even if you never open an account here. Push a ring you delivered last month through the quote calculator and you will usually find the leak was casting loss or the hours you spent seating melee. Push your own week through the bench hours calculator and you walk away with a shop rate you can say out loud at the next consultation without flinching. Write both numbers on a card, tape it above the bench, and quote from it.
From a good number to a quote a client signs
These calculators will give you a defensible total and an honest bench capacity for the year. What they cannot do is stamp a hold date on the metal line, collect the deposit before you order casting grain, or keep the CAD and wax approvals attached to the job. Ask for a walkthrough and we will set that up using your own alloy costs and shop rate.