Estimate startup launch costs across categories - legal, equipment, marketing, inventory, rent - with one-time versus recurring classification.
A startup budget written as a single lump sum hides its real shape. This tool takes your planned expenses - legal, equipment, marketing, inventory, rent, or categories of your own - lets you mark each as a one-time purchase or a monthly recurring cost, and returns separate totals plus a multi-month projection. The surprise is almost always the recurring column: a line that reads small monthly, like $1,000 rent plus $300 in ads, is $15,600 before your first anniversary. Planning against the one-time total alone underfunds the first year by that whole recurring sum.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Legal: registration $300 one-time, contract review $500 one-time; Equipment: laptop $1,200 one-time, printer $200 one-time; Marketing: website $800 one-time, ads $300 monthly; Inventory: initial stock $1,500 one-time; Rent: $1,000 monthly
Expected output
One-time total: $4,500. Recurring: $1,300/month. Over 12 months: $15,600 recurring, $20,100 all-in ($4,500 one-time + $15,600 recurring).
The six one-time items sum to 300 + 500 + 1,200 + 200 + 800 + 1,500 = $4,500, and the two monthly items sum to 300 + 1,000 = $1,300. Twelve months of recurring cost is 12 x 1,300 = $15,600, so the full 12-month launch total is 4,500 + 15,600 = $20,100.
Each expense is entered as a line item: a category - legal, equipment, marketing, inventory, rent, or one of your own - an amount, and a flag for whether it is paid once or monthly. The flag decides which column the amount lands in, and the two columns are summed independently, so a mis-tagged item quietly moves money between them without changing the combined figure.
One-time amounts sum into a setup total. Recurring amounts sum into a monthly total, which is multiplied across the horizon you are planning for - twelve months is the standard launch-planning horizon - and added to the setup total for a combined figure. Because the buckets never overlap, the numbers reconcile exactly: setup plus monthly times the horizon equals the combined total.
No, it totals what you enter. The result is only as complete as the line items, so forgetting insurance, licenses, utilities, or professional fees produces a confident-looking number that still misses them. Treat it as a budgeting aid, not a price database: check every figure against a quote, a supplier, or a market rate before making funding decisions.
Usually yes. Registration, deposits, and setup are cash out before the first sale, so they belong with one-time items. But recurring bills also start before launch and continue until revenue covers them, which is often more months than people imagine. If you want the multi-month total to reflect that ramp-up, include those months in the recurring entries yourself.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
Calculate gross, operating, and net profit margins from cost and revenue with breakeven analysis.
Convert between annual salary and hourly rate with adjustments for work hours, overtime, and benefits.
Calculate sales tax amounts, tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive prices for any tax rate or jurisdiction.
Calculate return on investment from initial cost and final value with annualized ROI and comparison tables.
Convert between markup and margin percentages, calculate selling price, and compare pricing strategies.
Convert numeric amounts to written words for invoices, checks, and legal documents in multiple currencies.