Embroidery Pricing Calculator Spreadsheet | Stitch Count, Thread & Needle Life, Digitizing Cost, Quote Builder | Excel Sheets

YOU PAID FOR THE DIGITIZING ONCE. YOU STITCH IT FIFTY TIMES.

Most embroidery pricing is a formula per thousand stitches and a guess at your time.

It leaves out the two costs that decide whether the shop makes money: the file you

paid a digitiser for, and the blank you ruin when a run goes wrong.

DIGITIZING IS PAID ONCE AND STITCHED MANY TIMES. A $25 file stitched twenty times

costs $1.25 an item. Stitched once, for the customer who wanted one hoodie, it costs

$25. Most quotes do not mention it at all, which is exactly why one-off custom work

feels busy and pays nothing. This workbook divides it by the reruns you actually

expect, and it sits outside the failure uplift, because a ruined stitch-out does not

make you pay the digitiser a second time.

STITCH COUNT IS THE CLOCK, NOT DESIGN SIZE. Run time comes from stitches and color

changes. A dense two inch fill outlasts a light six inch outline, so quoting by inches

loses money on precisely the logos that look small and cheap.

COLOR CHANGES ARE DEAD TIME. Every change is a trim, a cut and sometimes a re-thread.

Four of them on a short run can cost more than the stitching does.

THREAD AND NEEDLES ARE CONSUMED BY THE STITCH. Thread is bought by the cone and burned

by the thousand stitches. A needle has a life measured the same way, and a dull one

shreds thread and cuts fabric long before it snaps.

A BAD STITCH-OUT TAKES THE BLANK WITH IT. Puckering and bird's nests are discovered

after the blank, the thread and the run time are all spent. The good items carry the

ruined ones, and the way to handle that is to divide by your good-item rate.

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 15.54%. That one row leaves $4.68 on the table, and the workbook shows that gap

on every row you enter.

WHAT YOU GET

- Job Calculator: 25 rows, full breakdown per item, correct list price calculated, plus

a column showing exactly what the shortcut would have cost you

- Digitizing amortization built in: enter what the file cost and how many reruns you

expect, and every good item pays its share

- Setup: machine, effective stitch speed, color change time, thread per 1,000 stitches,

needle life, backing, labor, overhead, scrap rate, blank yield

- Blank Library: polos, caps, beanies, hoodies, tees, towels, totes, fleece, robes,

denim and onesies pre-loaded, costed per USABLE blank

- 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 stitch 50 instead of 5, and a grid showing what a wrong scrap rate

costs you

- 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

- Sales Log: what you actually sold, against what the model predicted

- Start Here: a plain-English guide, color-coded so you know which cells to touch

Works with any machine. Brother, Janome, Bernina, Ricoma, Barudan or a single-head

commercial in the garage. The machine doesn't matter. The cost structure does.

Eight tabs. 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,

and so is the data behind every chart, so you can check the math yourself.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Etsy sellers running monogram and custom logo lines, shops quoting team and corporate

work, hat and cap embroiderers, and anyone who has ever stitched a one-off and never

charged a cent for the file. If you already amortize digitizing across reruns, 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.