Debt Payoff Tracker
List all debts with balance, interest rate, and minimum payment. Compares avalanche vs snowball payoff strategies, calculates months to debt-free, and shows total interest saved per method.
Excel • Personal FinanceA financed machine changes three numbers at once: the payment, the fixed-cost base it lands in, and the overhead rate every job has to carry. Most owners only look at the payment. This walkthrough runs one set of numbers through three calculators, and by the end a $48,000 skid steer has turned into two-thirds of a job a month you have to sell before you earn a dollar.
The example business is a two-crew hardscape outfit carrying three debts:
| Debt | Balance | Rate | Monthly payment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skid steer, financed new | $48,000 | 8.5% over 60 months | $985 |
| Work truck | $12,000 | 9.9%, 23 payments left | $580 |
| Equipment credit line | $9,000 | 18.9%, revolving | $300 |
Everything else costs $9,200 a month whether the crews work or not: yard rent, insurance, phones and software, part-time office help, licences.
Step 1: Get the true monthly cost of each financed asset
Dealers quote a payment. Stretching the term is how that payment is made to look affordable while the total climbs. Run each asset through the Loan EMI Calculator and write down two figures: the payment and the total interest.
payment $985/mo | total repaid ~$59,090 | interest ~$11,090Check the term unit is months, not years, before you read the result. The link pre-fills the example; overwrite it with your own quote.
Two more runs cover the rest. The truck has 23 payments of $580 left against a $12,000 payoff, so about $1,200 of interest is still sitting in it. The $9,000 credit line at 18.9%, serviced at $300 a month, takes roughly 41 months to clear and costs about $3,280. The smallest balance on the list is the expensive one.
Total debt service: $1,865 a month. Every step below runs off that figure.
Step 2: Move every loan payment into fixed costs
Loan payments do not care how many jobs you sell. They are fixed overhead. Add the $1,865 to the $9,200 base and put $11,065 into the Break-Even Point Calculator as fixed costs, along with the price and variable cost of a typical job.
contribution margin = 2,800 − 1,316 = $1,484 per job
break-even with debt = 11,065 ÷ 1,484 = 7.46 → 8 jobs/month
break-even without debt = 9,200 ÷ 1,484 = 6.20 → 7 jobs/monthNow re-run it with fixed costs at break-even revenue of $9,200 instead of $11,065. The gap is what being financed costs: 1.26 jobs every month, about 15 a year, roughly $42,000 of revenue that has to be sold, built and delivered before a cent of it becomes profit. Service businesses billing hours can put the same figures into the Service Business Break-Even Calculator. Landscapers have a pre-shaped landscaping break-even calculator.
Break-even is survival, though, not a plan. Add a target profit to get the number you actually need. At $5,000 target profit the requirement is 10.8 jobs, so call it 11. Planned capacity is 12. The cushion is four jobs, and that cushion is what you spend when you finance the next thing.
Step 3: Recover the equipment on every job through the overhead rate
Break-even gives a volume. It does not put the machine into an individual quote. That happens in the Job Costing Calculator, through the overhead percentage, which has to be rebuilt every time you sign a finance agreement.
Set the rate on planned volume, not break-even volume
Divide monthly fixed cost by the direct cost you expect to push through the business at realistic volume. At 12 jobs a month that base is 12 × $1,316 = $15,792.
overhead rate = 11,065 ÷ 15,792 = 70%
job cost = 1,316 × 1.70 = $2,237
price at 20% margin = 2,237 ÷ 0.80 = $2,796 → quote $2,800Before the skid steer the fixed base was $10,080 and the rate came out lower. The finance agreement did not just add a payment. It raised the overhead percentage on every quote you write.
Estimators who mark up materials and labor separately can carry the same 70% into the Contractor Markup Calculator. The two prices should land within a few percent. If they do not, an input is wrong.
Step 4: Test whether the machine earns more margin than it costs
A financed asset is only defensible if it lifts contribution margin by more than its payment.
Before the skid steer the same patio took 30 crew hours, not 24. Materials were unchanged at $620, labor was 30 × $29 = $870, so direct cost was $1,490 and contribution margin $1,310. The machine cut six hours a job, worth $174. Across 12 jobs that is $2,088 a month of extra margin against a $985 payment. Net $1,103. Profit at plan moves from $5,640 to $6,743.
Watch break-even: 7.69 jobs before, 7.46 after. Financing that raises contribution margin by more than the payment does not raise break-even at all. Financing that raises no margin (a nicer truck, a second trailer) raises break-even by payment ÷ contribution margin, with nothing on the other side. So do the division before you sign. The skid steer needs 985 ÷ 1,484 = 0.66 extra jobs a month, eight a year, just to stand still.
Step 5: Pick a payoff order: avalanche or payment relief
The consumer methods are avalanche (highest rate first) and snowball (smallest balance first, for momentum). But business debt has a better second option than momentum.
Avalanche
Credit line at 18.9%, then truck at 9.9%, then skid steer at 8.5%. Clearing the $9,000 line stops about $3,280 of scheduled interest, the biggest saving per dollar committed.
Payment relief: the business snowball
Rank by monthly payment divided by balance. That ratio is how much fixed cost each dollar of payoff removes:
| Debt | Payment ÷ balance | Fixed cost removed |
|---|---|---|
| Work truck | 580 ÷ 12,000 = 4.8%/mo | $6,960/yr for $12,000 |
| Credit line | 300 ÷ 9,000 = 3.3%/mo | $3,600/yr for $9,000 |
| Skid steer | 985 ÷ 48,000 = 2.1%/mo | $11,820/yr for $48,000 |
The two methods disagree here, which is the useful case. Avalanche says the credit line. Relief says the truck. Sitting comfortably above break-even, three or more jobs of cushion, take the avalanche: the constraint is cash, not volume. At or below break-even, or with the slow season starting next month, take the payment relief. Saving interest is worth less than cutting the number of jobs you have to win.
Step 6: Value early payoff as a break-even cut
The interest saved by paying early is just the loan rate. No cleverness in it. But the fixed cost that vanishes with the payment is easy to miss. Clear the truck and fixed costs fall to $10,485, so break-even drops from 7.46 to 7.07 jobs, permanently. Rebuild the overhead rate while you are in there: 10,485 ÷ 15,792 = 66%, which takes the patio quote from $2,796 to $2,731 without touching margin. Every quote after that goes out $65 lower at the same margin.
Re-run the chain when a loan is added or cleared, when job price or crew rate moves more than about 5%, and at the start of each season. The overhead rate is the piece that goes stale quietly. A stale rate underprices every quote until somebody notices.
Related: monthly overhead planner · all personal finance tools
The revolving line's rate isn't fixed like the other two
The skid steer loan and the truck payment run at whatever rate was locked in on day one, and every number in the six steps above treats all three debts as if they hold steady. The credit line is different. Revolving business credit lines are commonly variable rate, tied to prime, which means the 18.9% in this example can move without any notice beyond a statement line most owners skim past.
A one or two point rate increase on a $9,000 balance is not going to reshuffle the avalanche-versus-relief decision on its own. But it does mean the credit line's numbers in step 5 and step 6 are a snapshot, not a fixed input the way the two term loans are. Recheck the actual rate on the statement each time you rerun this chain, not just the balance, since a line that crept from 18.9% to 22% quietly moves the avalanche math further in its favor without changing anything else in the picture.