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Fitting chair capacity planner
Find out how many full fittings your week actually holds once the letters, submissions and claim follow up calls are counted against the same hours.
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Cranial prosthesis price builder
Work out what a full custom unit should sell for once the vendor cost, the chair hours and the follow up visits you include are all on the page.
Most underpricing in a hair loss studio happens in the hours nobody counts. The vendor invoice is visible, so it gets marked up. The ninety minute consultation before treatment starts, the two hours of cutting in and thinning density, the cap alteration, and the two return visits when her scalp changes are all invisible, so they get absorbed. Over a year that is a lot of unpaid chair time.
Set your own numbers below. The labor rate is what an hour of your time in the chair needs to earn, not what you would pay an employee, and the margin is what you want left after unit cost and labor to cover rent, insurance, sample units and the months a claim sits unpaid. The deposit line assumes the common structure of half at order and the balance at handoff, since the client is usually waiting on reimbursement rather than holding it.
Your result
Total chair hours in the job
6.0
Every hour the client is in front of you, including the free return visits.
Cost of the job to you
$990
Vendor cost plus the chair time valued at your own rate.
Suggested price to quote
$1,800
The price that leaves your target margin after unit cost and chair time.
Deposit to take at order
$900
Half at order and half at handoff is the usual structure when a claim is pending.
These are your own numbers, not a benchmark, so change the labor rate until the suggested price matches what your market will bear and you can see exactly where the gap is.
Why follow up visits belong in the price
A client in active treatment will be back. Her scalp changes as chemotherapy progresses, the cap that fit in week one moves in week six, and a good studio does not charge her at the door for a twenty minute adjustment. That is correct practice and it is also unpaid labor unless you priced it in at the start.
Counting two included visits at half an hour each adds an hour of chair time to the job. At a realistic rate that is real money, and pricing it in means you can be generous at the counter without resenting it. It also gives you a clean answer when a client asks what happens if it needs adjusting.
Pricing when the claim has not settled
Reimbursement timing is not your risk to carry. The client buys the unit from you, and her carrier reimburses her later against the letter and the itemized invoice you provide. Studios that let a balance ride until the check arrives end up financing a payer with their own cash, sometimes for months.
Say it plainly at the consultation: this is the price, here is the deposit, the balance is due at handoff, and here is the paperwork that gives you the best shot at reimbursement. Clients almost never object when the paperwork is genuinely good. What they object to is a vague promise and a letter that arrives three weeks late.
Questions about this calculator
Should the vendor cost include shipping and the cap?
Include everything you pay out before the unit reaches your chair, so shipping, any cap or liner you supply and any rush fee. If you buy in bulk, use your true landed cost per unit rather than list price. Underestimating this line is the most common reason a job looks profitable and is not.
What labor rate should a solo studio owner use?
Start from what a fully booked chair hour needs to produce to cover your draw, your rent and your slow weeks, not from what you would pay a part time fitter. Many owners find the honest number is higher than what they had been implicitly charging. That gap is exactly what this calculator is meant to show.
Does the suggested price change how the claim is written?
The claim rests on the itemized invoice, and that invoice needs the prosthesis on its own line separate from cosmetic add ons like extra styling or a second cap. Price the prosthesis so it stands on its own. Our cranial prosthesis letter guide covers how to word the invoice so the two documents agree.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The cranial prosthesis claim file checklist
Everything that belongs in one client's claim file, in the order you actually collect it, from the first phone call to the day the reimbursement lands.
Take the number into a real fitting file
The figure on this page only matters if it survives a client sitting in your fitting chair. Inside StrandRestore that price attaches to the unit itself, along with the vendor order, the deposit, the itemized invoice and the claim that follows her out the door. Book a demo and bring the numbers you just entered so we can build the file around them.