This is the minimum you can accept, in addition to your expenses, for a day of assignment photography and not shortchange your budget. In accounting terms, it's the minimum gross profit you must make every day you shoot, in order to cover your ongoing, or overhead, costs. Your total bill to a client needs to include at least this amount for every day, plus any expenses required for that assignment, such as travel, equipment rental, film and digital charges. Billing your client less doesn't necessarily mean you're losing money, but it does mean you won't be able to fund all your budget items listed above - or it means you must collect commensurately more from other assignments to raise your average gross profit from each day of shooting. If you can't find enough better-paying work to subsidize your cheap clients, you'll have to do so yourself, by: giving up that special project you included in your travel budget, postponing the purchase of new equipment, lowering your salary or shooting more days per year. Spending your valuable time on an assignment for less than this break-even figure also means you're not spending your time improving or marketing yourself to get better-paying assignments. Remember, too, this is a minimum figure. Assignment prices, like stock photography, need to be based not only on your costs, but also on the value your client derives from your work. For more on this, please see our Pricing page. Finally, as carefully as you may have collected and computed all the data to fill in this calculator, you've almost certainly missed some expenses. In other words, this minimum number may be low. Consider this caveat, along with the value (usage) your client will receive, and negotiate accordingly.