A free spreadsheet for pricing sign jobs from your own costs: material per square foot, waste, ink, labour at your shop rate, hardware, markup and a minimum per job. It covers vinyl banners, coroplast yard signs, ACM (aluminum composite) signs and printed adhesive vinyl, with worked examples you can check by hand.
sign-pricing-template.xlsx: Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers. Yellow cells are your inputs and everything else is a formula. It has four sheets: Read me, Costs, Products and Quote. The values calculate when you open the file, so a file preview may show blank cells.materials.csv,products.csv,examples.csv: the same numbers as plain CSV, for importing or for scripts.build.py: regenerates all of the above from the numbers at the top of the file (pip install openpyxl).
The example costs are real supplier prices checked in November 2026, with sources below. They are not your prices. Replace them with what you actually pay and charge.
Work out what the banner costs you, multiply by your markup, and never go below your minimum:
area (sq ft) = width (in) x height (in) / 144 x quantity
material = area x (board or media + any vinyl face, per sq ft) x (1 + waste %)
ink = area x ink cost per sq ft x printed sides
labour = (setup minutes + labour minutes per sq ft x area) / 60 x shop rate
cost = material + ink + labour + hardware (grommets, stakes)
price = max(minimum, cost x (1 + markup %))
Worked example: a 3 x 6 ft, 13 oz vinyl banner, hemmed, with 8 grommets
| Step | Working | $ |
|---|---|---|
| Area | 36 x 72 / 144 | 18 sq ft |
| Material | 18 x $0.32 (a $216 roll of 54 in x 150 ft = 675 sq ft) x 1.30 waste | 7.49 |
| Ink | 18 x $0.25 | 4.50 |
| Labour | (15 min setup + 1 min per sq ft x 18) / 60 x $75 an hour | 41.25 |
| Grommets | 8 x $0.10 | 0.80 |
| Cost | 54.04 | |
| Price | cost x (1 + 120% markup), $45 minimum, rounded to the cent | 118.88 ($6.60 per sq ft) |
Why 30% waste: a 36 in banner printed on a 54 in roll throws away a third of the width unless you can nest another job beside it.
Three things the example shows:
- Labour is most of the cost of a small banner. Material and ink are about $12, while the labour is $41. Shops that price banners only "per square foot" lose money on small ones. That's why every product here has a minimum and a setup time.
- The price per square foot falls as the banner grows. In this template a 2 x 4 ft banner comes to $9.48/sq ft and a 3 x 10 ft to $5.68/sq ft, which matches how shops price in practice.
- On small jobs, your shop rate matters more than your material price. On big runs it's the other way round: for 25 yard signs at 24 x 36 in, the coroplast costs more than the labour.
What sign shops charge (for checking your result, not for copying):
- Prices vary widely. In a 2022 Signs101 thread pricing a 3 x 8 ft full-colour banner, answers ranged from about $3.50–4/sq ft to $195–265 for the banner (about $8–11/sq ft) (Signs101).
- Signs.com says "a standard pricing rule for local sign shops is to charge $8 per square foot for printed banners" (Signs.com).
- 4over4, an online printer, starts a 2 x 4 ft banner at $79 (4over4).
From examples.csv. Each one is the Quote sheet's formula applied to the example costs and products.
| Job | Cost $ | Price $ | Each $ | Per sq ft $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 x 4 ft banner, 4 grommets | 34.48 | 75.85 | 75.85 | 9.48 |
| 3 x 6 ft banner, 8 grommets | 54.04 | 118.88 | 118.88 | 6.60 |
| 3 x 10 ft banner, 12 grommets | 77.43 | 170.35 | 170.35 | 5.68 |
| 18 x 24 in yard sign with stake, 1 | 13.95 | 20.92 | 20.92 | 6.97 |
| 18 x 24 in yard signs with stakes, 10 | 83.24 | 124.86 | 12.49 | 4.16 |
| 24 x 36 in yard signs, 25 | 316.20 | 474.30 | 18.97 | 3.16 |
| 24 x 36 in ACM sign, 1 | 49.48 | 98.97 | 98.97 | 16.50 |
| 4 x 8 ft ACM sign, 1 | 209.75 | 419.50 | 419.50 | 13.11 |
| 3 x 5 ft window graphic, 1 | 59.69 | 149.23 | 149.23 | 9.95 |
| 12 x 12 in decals, 20 | 73.34 | 183.35 | 9.17 | 9.17 |
The settings that produce these, from products.csv:
| Product | Materials | Waste % | Setup min | Labour min per sq ft | Hardware $ | Markup % | Minimum $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl banner, 13 oz, hemmed | banner vinyl | 30 | 15 | 1.0 | grommets $0.10 each, as extras | 120 | 45 |
| Coroplast yard sign, 4 mm, printed direct (with or without an H-stake) | coroplast | 15 | 5 | 0.5 | $1.50 H-stake | 50 | 20 |
| ACM sign, 3 mm, printed vinyl face (unlaminated) | ACM + adhesive vinyl | 15 | 10 | 2.0 | – | 100 | 60 |
| Printed adhesive vinyl (window, wall, decal) | adhesive vinyl | 20 | 15 | 1.5 | – | 150 | 35 |
"Printed direct" means a flatbed (UV) printer. If you print vinyl and mount it on coroplast, set the yard sign's face material to the adhesive vinyl, as the ACM sign does.
Only the banner roll and ink figures were checked on the source page. The other three are typical ranges from search listings: check them with your supplier.
| Material | Example | Per sq ft | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13 oz banner vinyl | $216 per 54 in x 150 ft roll | $0.320 | FastPlot 13 oz scrim banner |
| Printable adhesive vinyl, calendered | $340 per 54 in x 150 ft roll | $0.504 | Typical range, check your supplier: about $325–$346 per 54 in x 150 ft roll in Nov 2026 search listings for Roland and GF calendered vinyl (we couldn't open the product pages to confirm). |
| 4 mm coroplast | $33.15 per 4 x 8 ft sheet | $1.036 | Typical range, check your supplier: about $33–35 a sheet retail in 10-packs in Nov 2026 search listings (Home Depot); sign suppliers are usually cheaper (we couldn't open the product page to confirm). |
| 3 mm ACM | $78.88 per 4 x 8 ft sheet | $2.465 | Typical range, check your supplier: about $79 a sheet for matte white in a Nov 2026 search listing (Curbell Plastics); finish and quantity change it (we couldn't open the product page to confirm). |
| Ink | $0.25 per printed sq ft | $0.25 | Roland DGA puts it at $0.12 to over $0.32 per sq ft (Roland DGA). Owners in a 2010 Signs101 thread worked out about $0.24–$0.50 (thread). Ink cost varies by printer and coverage, so use your own figure. |
The $75/hour shop rate, the $0.10 grommet and $1.50 H-stake prices, the waste percentages, the minutes and the markups are illustrative settings, not survey results. Laminate, design time, installation and delivery aren't included. Add laminate as a material (and as the face material where you use it), and add the others as extras.
- Costs: enter what you paid for each material and how many square feet that purchase gave you. Then enter your shop rate.
- Products: set the materials, waste, minutes, hardware, markup and minimum for each thing you sell. To add a product, add a row. To add a material, add a row on Costs. The formulas pick up rows up to 200.
- Quote: pick a product, then type the width and height in inches and the quantity. The extras column covers per-piece add-ons such as grommets.
Corrections and better-sourced numbers are welcome as issues or pull requests.
Made by Smallwright. If you'd rather not keep a spreadsheet, Grommetbook does the same math in a browser price book, with customer approval on their phone.