Free tool
How many separation cases can you actually track at once
Count the deadline checks and document chases your open cases generate each month, then compare that against the admin hours you really have.
Free tool, no sign up
What your flat coaching package really pays per hour
Enter the fee you quote and the hours an engagement actually consumes, including the unscheduled calls and the document chasing, and see the rate you are working for.
A flat package is the most popular way to price divorce coaching and the easiest way to underprice it. The quoted fee is set against the sessions you plan to run. The hours that arrive later are the ones nobody counts: the call the night before a mediation, the twenty minutes spent renaming bank statements, the third request for the same retirement statement.
This calculator counts them. Put in your package fee, how many months the engagement typically runs, and the three kinds of hours it consumes each month. The result is the hourly rate you are actually working for, and the distance between that and the rate you meant to charge.
Your result
Total hours per engagement
32.5
Every hour one client consumes from intake week to decree.
Rate you are actually working for
$74
The package fee divided across all of those hours.
Gap against your target rate
$2,475
What one engagement costs you against the rate you meant to charge.
Value of the document and deadline hours
$1,500
What the chasing and sorting is worth at your target rate.
These are your own numbers and nobody else sees them, so use the honest hours rather than the ones on your service page.
Why the admin hours are the ones that decide the number
Session hours are visible and easy to price. Document hours are invisible and almost never priced. A client sends fourteen statements as phone photographs, three of them for the wrong months, and the hour you spend sorting that is an hour nobody quoted for.
Run the calculator with your admin hours at zero and then at the real figure. On a typical five month engagement the difference is often the entire distance between the rate you wanted and the rate you got. That is the argument for either raising the package price or cutting the chasing time, and the second is usually easier to do.
What to do with the gap
There are three honest moves. Raise the package fee to reflect the whole engagement. Write a tighter scope so the unscheduled hours have a boundary and a price. Or shorten the admin hours by giving the client a document list she can finish and one place to put things.
Most practices do some of each. The document side is the quickest win because it is mechanical: an ordered disclosure list, one home for the files and a deadline page with check dates cuts the chasing without a single difficult pricing conversation.
Questions about this calculator
Should I count the intake call in the hours?
If the intake call is free and short, leave it out. If you routinely spend an hour or more on consultations that turn into engagements, add that hour spread across the months. The point is to see the full cost of one client, not to be strict about categories.
My engagements vary a lot in length. Which number do I use?
Run it twice, once for your shortest realistic case and once for a case that stalls waiting on a court date. The second number is the one your pricing has to survive. If the long case still clears your floor, the package price is sound.
Does this work for mediation instead of coaching?
Yes, with one adjustment. Mediation engagements often bill by session rather than as one package, so enter the total fee both parties pay across the whole matter. The admin hours are usually higher in mediation because you are collecting documents from two households.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The separation binder setup checklist
A working checklist for the four stages of a separation engagement, written for the coach or mediator who has to keep the documents, the dates and the decisions in one place.
The hours sitting behind that figure
That result came out of your own admin hours, and those are precisely the hours a case binder exists to shorten. Fifteen minutes on a call is enough to show you the same separation with a check date on every deadline and one home for every bank statement, instead of a search back through email. Bring the number you just got and we will work from it rather than from a generic example.