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Break-Even

Units needed to cover fixed and variable costs.

Free to use, no sign-up required. Break-Even is one of 198 tools built into Xenition, alongside a chat that can use them for you.

Finds the point where sales exactly cover costs. Unit mode answers how many units you must sell at a set price; Price mode answers what you must charge per unit to cover costs at a set volume.

How to use Break-Even

  1. Pick Unit or Price at the top.
  2. In Unit mode, enter Fixed costs, your Price/unit and the Cost/unit of making each one.
  3. In Price mode, enter Fixed costs, the Total variable cost and the Number of units you expect to sell.
  4. Read Break-even units and Break-even revenue, or the Break-even price.

How it works

Unit mode: break-even units = fixed costs ÷ (price − cost per unit), rounded up to a whole unit; revenue = the exact unit figure × price. If the price does not exceed the unit cost there is no margin and no answer. Price mode: break-even price = (fixed costs + total variable cost) ÷ number of units.

Example

Fixed costs of 5,000, a price of 25 and a unit cost of 10 give a 15 contribution margin, so 5,000 ÷ 15 = 333.3, shown as 334 units and 8,333.33 in revenue. In Price mode, 5,000 fixed plus 2,000 variable over 500 units needs a price of 14.

Questions about Break-Even

What counts as a fixed cost versus a variable cost?

Fixed costs stay the same whatever you sell, such as rent and salaries. Variable costs rise with every unit, such as materials and packaging.

Why round the units up?

You cannot sell a third of a unit, and selling 333 would still leave a small loss. The first whole unit that covers all costs is 334.

Use it from chat

You do not have to open Break-Even to use it. Ask Xenition in plain language and it runs the right tool, then carries the answer into whatever you are working on — a document, a spreadsheet, a deck.

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