To price a coaching package for real profit, add up every hour it consumes (sessions plus prep, messaging, onboarding, and admin), subtract your direct costs per client, and check the effective hourly rate that’s left. If it falls below the hourly floor you actually need to live on, raise the price or cut the scope. Most underpriced packages aren’t underpriced on purpose. They’re priced off the session count, which quietly ignores half the work.
Why does session math lie to you?
Say you sell a 12-week package for $4,000. Twelve calls, so it feels like $333 an hour. That number is a fantasy, and it’s the reason a lot of coaches feel busy and broke at the same time.
The calls are the visible part. The invisible part is everything wrapped around them: the intake review before week one, the 30 minutes of prep before each session, the Voxer messages and email replies between calls, the closing summary, the scheduling back-and-forth, the invoicing. That work is real, it’s non-negotiable if you want results, and it never shows up in “$4,000 divided by 12.”
Price the package on session count and you’re pricing a product you don’t actually deliver. Price it on total hours and you can finally see whether the engagement pays you or costs you.
How do you count every hour the package really eats?
Take one representative client and log the whole delivery cycle, start to finish. Not just the calls. Here’s what that looks like for a typical 12-week 1:1 program:
| Activity | Hours |
|---|---|
| 12 weekly calls (60 min each) | 12.0 |
| Prep and session notes (30 min each) | 6.0 |
| Kickoff, intake review, goal-setting | 3.0 |
| Between-session messaging and email support | 6.0 |
| Final review, wrap-up report, offboarding | 2.0 |
| Scheduling, invoicing, admin | 2.0 |
| Total delivery hours | 31.0 |
Twelve session hours became 31 real hours. That’s the number that matters, and it’s the one nobody puts on the sales page. If your delivery hours land at roughly two to three times your session hours, you’re normal, not inefficient.
Watch out: “Unlimited” support, on-demand messaging, and generous revision policies are hour sinks that never appear in your price. If you offer them, cap them or price them in. An unbounded scope on a fixed price is a slow-motion loss.
What are your direct costs per client?
Hours aren’t the only thing a package consumes. Every client you enroll triggers some real cash out the door, and it comes straight off the top:
- Assessment or software seats you buy per client (say $120)
- Workbooks, materials, or printed assets ($40)
- Payment processing on the full package price, roughly 2.9% + $0.30, which is about $116 on $4,000
That’s about $276 per client before you’ve earned a cent of profit. Small compared to the fee, but it’s not zero, and on a thin package it’s the difference between a decent rate and a bad one. Don’t fold these into vague “overhead.” They scale with each sale, so subtract them per client.
What’s your true effective hourly rate on the package?
Now the math that tells the truth. Take the price, subtract direct costs, divide by total hours:
($4,000 − $276) ÷ 31 hours = $120 per hour.
So the package that looked like $333 an hour actually pays $120. Whether that’s good or brutal depends entirely on the floor you’re measuring it against, which is the next question, and the one most coaches skip. Running the same subtraction across every offer in your Package Profitability Calculator is the fastest way to see which of your programs is quietly carrying the others.
How do you set the hourly floor to price up from?
Your floor isn’t the wage you’d accept from an employer. As a self-employed coach you’re covering three things a salary hides:
- Non-billable time. Marketing, sales calls, admin, and learning eat maybe 40% of your working week. Only about 60% of your hours are billable, so a billable hour has to pay for the unbillable ones.
- Self-employment taxes. Set aside roughly 25–30% for federal, state, and self-employment tax. That’s income you never keep.
- Overhead. Software, insurance, a coach for yourself, a workspace. Fixed costs that run whether or not you sell.
Work backward from take-home. If you want $100,000 in your pocket, gross closer to $145,000 after tax, then spread that across only your billable hours plus overhead. For most solo coaches that lands somewhere around a $140–$160 billable floor. Call it $150.
Against a $150 floor, a package delivering $120 an hour isn’t a small miss. It’s you working below cost on every client you take.
Pricing up from the floor: the worked example
Flip the calculation. Instead of picking a price that sounds appealing and hoping it works, build the price from the floor up:
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| 31 delivery hours × $150 floor | $4,650 |
| Direct costs per client | $276 |
| Minimum viable package price | ~$4,950 |
The floor says $4,950, so round to $5,000. That’s the price that merely breaks even against your target income. Anything you charge above it is genuine margin and the reward for results, positioning, and demand, not a favor to the client.
Notice what this does to the original offer: your $4,000 package was underpriced by about $1,000, roughly 20%. Not a rounding error. That’s the gap between a business that compounds and one that stalls at “fully booked and still stressed about money.” Before you publish a new number, drop your real hours and costs into the Package Profitability Calculator and confirm the effective rate clears your floor with room to spare.
Frequently asked questions
Should I lower the price if a client says it’s too expensive?
No. Lower the scope instead. Once you’ve priced from an hourly floor, discounting means working below cost, so cut sessions or trim support to reach a smaller number. That protects your rate and keeps the offer honest.
How is a package rate different from my hourly rate?
A package bundles session time with all the invisible delivery work. Your quoted hourly rate only covers the call. The effective rate, price minus costs divided by total hours, is what a package actually pays you, and it’s almost always lower than the hourly number you’d give for a single session.
Do I really need to count messaging and admin time?
Yes, because that’s where fixed-price packages bleed. Messaging, prep, and admin often add up to as many hours as the calls themselves. Leave them out and your price is built on a delivery model you don’t run.
What effective hourly rate should I aim for?
At minimum, above your billable floor, the rate that covers your target income once you account for non-billable time, taxes, and overhead. For many solo coaches that floor sits near $140–$160 an hour. Treat it as the bottom, not the goal.
How often should I reprice my packages?
At least once a year, and any time scope creeps or your costs rise. Repricing is easy when your numbers are clean, which is exactly why keeping accurate books through the year beats reconstructing them from memory every January.
Does raising my price cost me clients?
Usually fewer than you fear. A 15–20% increase rarely halves your inquiries, and even if volume dips slightly, higher-margin clients leave you more time and less resentment. Underpricing is the more expensive habit.
Good pricing depends on knowing your real numbers. Tabby is AI bookkeeping built for coaches and consultants, so your income, costs, and profit per package stay clear all year instead of once a quarter. When repricing time comes, the math is already done.
See how Tabby works or start a free trial and price your next package from real data.
