Laser Cutting Pricing Calculator Spreadsheet | Sheet Yield, Tube Life & Scrap Rate, Quote Builder | Glowforge xTool CO2 | Excel Sheets

YOU DO NOT BUY SQUARE INCHES. YOU BUY SHEETS.

Most laser pricing calculators multiply part area by material cost and add an hourly rate. That is not what a sheet of Baltic birch costs you, and it is why laser shops quote low and wonder where the money went.

SHEET YIELD, NOT PART AREA. The offcut you cannot nest another part into is paid-for material that leaves as waste. If you get 85% of a sheet into parts, your real material cost is materially higher than the part area suggests.

THE LASER SOURCE DIES. A CO2 tube has a rated life in hours, and diodes degrade. On a $260 tube rated for 2,000 hours, every run hour owes it money. Replacing one is a major cost that every job should have been paying into.

OPTICS AND CONSUMABLES. Lenses, mirrors, nozzles and air-assist filters wear out. Masking tape is consumed by the sheet, not by the part.

SCRAPPED PARTS. Char, focus errors and bad nesting produce parts you cannot sell. The good ones have to carry that cost, and the way to handle that is to divide by your good-part rate.

WEEDING AND FINISHING. Masking removal, sanding scorch and cleaning is paid time. On engraved work it often exceeds the machine time.

MARKETPLACE FEES. You cannot add your margin and then subtract fees. That arithmetic does not leave you with your margin. The price has to be solved backwards.

On the worked example included, a shop targeting 35% using the standard method actually earns 15.02%. The workbook shows that gap on every row.

WHAT YOU GET

• Job Calculator: 25 rows, full breakdown per part, correct list price calculated, plus a column showing exactly what the shortcut would have cost you
• Setup: machine, tube life, optics, power, labor, overhead, scrap rate, sheet yield
• Material Library: plywood, acrylic, MDF, hardwood, anodized aluminum and leather pre-loaded, costed per USABLE square inch
• Fee Profiles. Etsy, Etsy with Offsite Ads, eBay, Shopify, Amazon Handmade and direct. All editable
• Break-even & What-if: your lowest acceptable price, a volume table showing what changes when you run 50 instead of 5, and a grid showing what a wrong failure rate costs you
• Sales Log: what you actually sold, against what the model predicted
• Dashboard: four live charts (cost breakdown, correct vs naive vs break-even, cost and price as the run gets longer, and price against failure rate) that follow whichever job row you select
• Start Here: a plain-English guide, color-coded so you know which cells to touch

Works with CO2, diode and fiber lasers. Glowforge, xTool, OMTech, Thunder, or a diode in the garage. The machine doesn't matter. The cost structure does.

Works in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, both tested. Instant digital download. No macros, no add-ons, nothing to install. Every formula is visible and editable, so you can check the math yourself.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Laser shops quoting custom work, Etsy sellers running engraved product lines, makerspaces recovering costs, and anyone who has never charged a job for the tube hours it consumed. If you already track sheet yield and amortize tube life, you don't need this.

DISCLOSURE

Portions of this workbook, including its layout and formulas, were produced with the assistance of AI tools, then reviewed and tested by a human before publication.

NOT ACCOUNTING ADVICE

This is a costing tool, not tax or accounting software. Results depend entirely on the figures you enter. Check them against your own records.