Rush Order and Expedite Premium Calculator
Rush work feels profitable because the customer accepts a price bump, but overtime, bumped jobs and premium freight often eat the whole premium. This calculator itemizes what a rush actually costs and shows the surcharge needed to keep your normal margin on the order.
Your numbers
Full cost including labor, overhead and material at normal lead time.
Employer taxes and workers comp that scale with pay. Benefits that are flat per head are excluded.
Extra setups and lost run time on jobs that get pushed back.
Your results
Planning estimate. It treats overtime as the only added labor cost and ignores second-order effects such as fatigue, scrap and late deliveries on displaced jobs. Customer contracts may cap or forbid expedite fees; check terms before quoting.
Required surcharge vs overtime hours
Sweeps Overtime hours needed to hit the date from 0 to 120, holding your other inputs fixed.
Rush job cost tracking in your ERP
Optional: we can show how to flag expedited jobs and compare estimated and actual overtime inside your ERP.
Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.
How to use it
Enter the order quantity, standard price and standard cost. Estimate the overtime hours required beyond a normal schedule, the crew's base wage and the pay multiplier. Add the machine hours of other jobs that must move and the shop rate you lose or reschedule on them. Include any expedited material, outside process or freight. The calculator separates the true added cost from the surcharge, so you can quote with a number you can defend.
Method behind the numbers
Only the overtime premium is extra: straight-time wages already sit in standard cost, so the added expense is hours x wage x (multiplier - 1), plus payroll taxes that scale with pay. Disruption is displaced machine hours x shop rate, a conservative proxy for the margin you lose or the extra setup you create. The rush price is (standard cost + extra per piece) / (1 - standard margin), which keeps the same percentage margin on the larger cost base. The floor surcharge shows the minimum that only repays the extra cost.
Reading the result
With the defaults, 30 overtime hours at time and a half, four displaced machine hours and 350 dollars of expedited freight add about 1,500 dollars of cost to a 200 piece order, so the surcharge to hold margin is in the low twenties percent. Slide overtime hours up and the chart shows the surcharge rising roughly in line. If a customer will only accept a 10 percent expedite fee, you can see how much margin you give away by saying yes.
Common mistakes
Charging a flat 10 or 20 percent regardless of order size is the usual error: a small fixed freight cost is a huge percentage on a 20 piece order and a rounding error on 2,000 pieces. Another is ignoring displaced work; the job you push back may cost you a late penalty or a setup you did not plan. Quote rush fees as a line item so the customer sees the cost of urgency and your ERP can report expedite revenue separately.
- Quote expedite as a separate line, not buried in unit price.
- Set a minimum expedite charge so tiny orders still pay for the disruption.
- Track actual overtime per rush job to refine your estimates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I charge a percentage or a flat rush fee?
Use a flat minimum plus a percentage. Fixed costs such as freight and a lost setup do not scale with quantity, while overtime scales with hours. A common policy is the greater of a minimum charge or a percentage of the order value, tied to how many days you compress.
Why only count the overtime premium and not the whole overtime pay?
Because straight-time wages are already included in your standard cost and would be paid at normal pace anyway. The incremental cost of working the hours at overtime is the premium portion, which is wage x (multiplier - 1) plus taxes that scale with pay.
How do I estimate displaced job cost?
Count the machine hours of work that will be delayed or re-sequenced and multiply by your shop or machine rate. It is a proxy for lost capacity. If delayed jobs carry late-delivery penalties, add those amounts explicitly.
Can I hold margin dollars instead of margin percent?
Yes, but be deliberate. Holding margin dollars means price rises by the extra cost only, which is the floor surcharge shown here. Holding margin percent charges more because the larger cost base would otherwise dilute your percentage return.
If rush jobs are common, Netray can help you pull actual overtime and displaced-job data from your ERP so surcharges come from history rather than instinct.
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