The problem
You set your rate at $75/hr when you started. You haven't looked at whether you're actually hitting it since. Some jobs feel right. Others leave you tired and broke, and you can't explain why.
Busy months make it worse. You stay booked, the phone keeps ringing, and the bank account still feels thin. Without a target on every job, "busy" and "profitable" get treated like the same thing. They aren't.
Why we built it
Profit is a feeling for most contractors. We wanted it to be a color. Green or red against a target you set yourself — so you don't have to re-run the math every Friday night to know if a job was worth doing.
Effective hourly rate already tells you what you kept per hour. Worth It answers the next question: did that hour clear your bar, or are you quietly working below the rate you told yourself you'd charge?
How it works
When you set up your business profile, you enter your target effective hourly rate. Every job's profit summary then shows a Worth It indicator:
- Green checkmark: EHR cleared your target
- Red indicator: EHR fell short, with the gap shown
It's not a judgment — it's information. A commercial job that scored red because of one bad scope line might still be worth pursuing. A residential callback that scored green at a thin margin might not be worth repeating at the same price. The score tells you which jobs to re-examine; you decide what to do about them.
The target lives in your profile, so you can raise it when your costs go up or when you decide you're done taking $48/hr work. Every new job is measured against the number you actually care about, not a national average.
What changes for your business
Before
You finish a job and feel about it. Good days and bad days blur. You quote the next one the same way because you have no record of which jobs cleared your bar.
After
You finish a job and see a number and a color. Red means you open the line items and find what happened — material overrun, extra hours, scope creep, a drive you never billed — and you quote the next one differently. Green means that job type is a keeper at your current rate.
Common questions
What is a Worth It score in DIRT?
Worth It is a green or red indicator on every completed job that shows whether the job cleared your target hourly rate. Set your target in your business profile — say $75/hr — and DIRT compares every job's actual EHR to that number. Green means you cleared it. Red means you fell short, with the gap shown.
How do I set my target hourly rate in DIRT?
In your business profile or onboarding settings, enter your target effective hourly rate. This is the rate you need to earn for the work to be worth doing. DIRT uses it as the benchmark for every job's Worth It indicator and for the EHR trend charts in Stats.
What do I do when a job shows red in DIRT?
Look at the line items. Red usually means one of three things: the job ran longer than quoted, materials cost more than expected, or soft costs (mileage, supply runs) ate into margin. The job detail shows the full breakdown so you can see exactly which category caused the shortfall.
Is a red Worth It score always bad?
Not necessarily. A one-time scope surprise on an otherwise good client relationship might be worth accepting. The indicator is information, not a verdict. The value is in seeing the pattern — if the same client or job type keeps showing red, that is when it becomes a quoting or relationship problem you need to address.
How do I improve my Worth It score over time?
Quote more accurately, recover soft costs better, and stop repeating low-EHR job types at the same price. DIRT's Worth It history and job-list-by-profit view show the pattern over time. The most common improvement is adding overhead spread so your target EHR actually reflects your real cost of doing business.
Does Worth It scoring work on every DIRT plan?
Yes. Worth It scoring is included in every plan, including the free Solo tier. You log the job, DIRT calculates the EHR, and the indicator appears on the job detail screen. No paid upgrade required for this feature.
Start free
Try it free.
Every DIRT plan includes this feature — Solo included. No credit card, no trial that expires. Set up in minutes and use it on your next job from the truck.