The Christmas Light Installation Pricing Calculator Pack: Seven linked calculators, every formula checked by recalculation

Seven calculators for pricing Christmas light installation from your own crew, truck, gear and light costs, not from anyone's rate sheet. Sheet 1 spreads your ladders and lift over the seasons they last and turns your costs into a crew-hour price ($89.52 in the worked example). Sheet 2 counts the wire, bulbs and clips a house takes from its roofline and ridge feet, and sheet 3 turns labor, materials and margin into a price per linear foot ($3.21 in the example). Later sheets compare leasing your lights against the customer owning them, price takedown and storage, count the installs your window fits and run the whole season's profit. Every figure is an example for you to overwrite. These are estimates, not tax, legal or insurance advice. Every formula was recalculated and checked against an independent implementation before this shipped.

What is in it

7 calculators, one per sheet. Overwrite the blue cells with your own numbers and everything else follows. Nothing is locked, there are no macros, and it opens in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice and Google Sheets.

• Crew hourly cost and price: What does an hour of your crew cost, and what must it bill?
• Lights and clips needed: What wire, bulbs and clips does this house take?
• Price per linear foot: What should this house cost, and what is that per foot?
• Lease vs customer-owns: Should the customer lease your lights or buy them outright?
• Takedown and storage fees: What should takedown and off-season storage cost the customer?
• Season capacity: What number of installs fits your install window?
• Season profit: What does the whole season earn after every cost?

Every formula was checked

This pack contains 63 formulas. Before it was published, every one of them was recalculated by a spreadsheet engine and compared against an independent implementation of the same arithmetic written in Python. All 63 agreed to within a cent, and the workbook carries a Verification sheet saying so.

That is an unusual thing to be able to claim about a spreadsheet, and it is the main reason to buy this one rather than download a free template. A formula that looks right and is wrong is worse than no formula at all, because you will act on it.

What each calculator assumes

There is a sheet listing this, because a calculator that hides its assumptions is just a number generator:

• Fixed costs are spread evenly over the crew hours you enter. Gear loses its value evenly over the seasons you expect it to last, with nothing left at the end. A crew hour is the whole crew working one hour. Margin is a share of price, not a markup on cost.
• Wire is bought by the foot with nothing left over; clips are bought in whole packs. Bulb and clip counts round up to the next whole one. Extension cords, timers and spare bulbs are not counted: add them to the other-runs feet or the material cost on sheet 3.
• Install time grows evenly with each foot of run. Setup and travel are the same whatever the length. The margin applies to labor and materials alike. A second story, a steep pitch or a lift job changes the crew hours per 100 feet: time it and enter it.
• Lights are replaced when their seasons run out, for both options. The labor price is the same whether the customer owns the lights or leases them. Who stores owned lights is on sheet 5. Money is not discounted for time.
• Storage rent is shared evenly across every bin the space holds, full or not; an unused bin's share is yours to carry. Takedown time is a fixed share of install time. Handling is paid at the crew-hour cost.
• Every job takes the average install time and every working day is a full day. Service calls for dead bulbs or tripped breakers are not counted: lower the hours a day to leave room for them.
• Lights bought this season are counted in full this season, a cash view; sheet 4 spreads them over their life instead. Every install is also taken down. Your own pay is inside the wages if you entered it on sheet 1, so profit is what is left after paying yourself.

What this is not

Not financial, tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, borrow or sign anything. These are calculators: they show what a choice costs, not which choice is right for you. Where a published rate or threshold is used it is the one current when the pack was built; those change, the arithmetic does not.

Honest about the format

One .xlsx workbook, 7 calculator sheets plus Start Here, Assumptions and Verification. Not a PDF, not a physical product, not a Notion template. Available immediately after purchase; nothing ships.

Refunds

If this isn't what you expected, email me within 30 days and I'll refund you in full. No need to explain. Because it's an instant download I can't take the file back, so I'd rather you just had your money back.