Day-Rate Simulator
The Day-Rate Simulator calculates your company’s revenue and pre-tax profit across four leave scenarios. It bridges the gap between what you earn per day and the profit figure the Optimiser needs.
Enter your Day Rate (£) — your charge-out rate per billable day. Enter Annual Company Expenses (£) — fixed annual costs your company incurs regardless of how many days you work (accountancy, software, insurance, etc.). Set Working Days per Year — the total available working days before leave (default 252, which is 52 weeks × 5 minus 8 bank holidays). Select the Tax Year to use the correct public holiday calendar for the monthly planner.
Enter leave days for Scenarios A through D. These represent four different holiday/leave assumptions — for example, A = no leave, B = 10 days, C = 25 days (standard UK holiday), D = 35 days (holiday + illness buffer). The simulator calculates all four simultaneously so you can see the revenue and profit impact of each leave level before committing to a scenario.
The results table shows all four scenarios with five columns: Scenario label (A–D), Working Days (total days minus leave), Revenue (working days × day rate), Expenses (fixed annual costs, same across all scenarios), Profit Before Salaries (revenue minus expenses — this is your company profit before any director remuneration), and a → Optimiser button. The bar chart visualises Revenue and Profit Before Salaries side-by-side for all four scenarios, making the leave/profit trade-off immediately visible.
Click Monthly planning to open a detailed month-by-month calendar for the selected tax year. Each month shows the total calendar days, weekends, public holidays (loaded from the UK tax calendar for the selected year), and resulting working days. Enter leave days per month to plan precisely — for example, 10 days in August, 5 in December. The monthly totals sum to give you a precise full-year working day count. Click Copy to Scenario A to use your monthly plan as Scenario A in the main results table.