In-House vs. Outsourced Fulfillment Calculator

It depends almost entirely on installed volume, because in-house fulfillment is mostly fixed cost and outsourced fulfillment is mostly variable. Design staff, permit coordination, engineering, project management, warehouse, and software are payable whether you install two deals or forty, so the in-house cost per deal falls as volume rises. A per-deal fulfillment fee stays flat. That means there is a crossover volume above which in-house is cheaper and below which you are paying for capacity you aren't using. This calculator finds that crossover from your own numbers rather than asserting one answer.

The honest answer is that it varies too much by market and staffing model for anyone to quote you a number, which is why this calculator asks you to enter it instead. The cost centers to account for are drafting and design labor, permit coordination for AHJ submissions and correction cycles, structural and electrical engineering including stamped sets where a jurisdiction requires them, project management and funding-portal uploads, warehouse and logistics if you hold materials, and the software licenses behind all of it. All of them should be fully burdened, not base salary.

Because in-house fulfillment usually means paying for materials weeks before the lender funds the project, and that rolling balance has a carry cost even if you never draw on a credit line. It is capital that could be funding growth instead. At 15 deals a month, $15,000 of materials per deal, and a 60-day gap to funding, roughly 30 deals are in flight at once and about $450,000 is tied up. This calculator prices that carry at whatever cost of capital you enter and adds it to the in-house side.

Cash cost is the easy part. It does not price hiring and ramp time, the risk of carrying fixed staff through a slow quarter, quality and rework, how fast you can enter a new market, or the strategic value of owning a capability rather than renting it. Those factors frequently decide the call in the opposite direction from the spreadsheet. A high-volume org may still outsource to enter a new state quickly, and a low-volume org may still hire because it wants the capability. Treat the crossover number as one input, not the decision.

There is no single published figure, which is why this tool asks you to enter one rather than prefilling ours. Cost depends on volume, the markets you sell in, and which parts of the stack you need: financing only, materials only, or full fulfillment through project management. Get in touch with your volume and markets and we'll give you a real number to put into this calculator instead of an estimate.

Yes, and it is common. An organization that already has strong project management may want only Direct-Pay material procurement and multi-lender financing. A sales-only org typically wants the whole chain: financing, materials, design and permitting, installer assignment, and project management to PTO. To model a partial outsource, leave the in-house cost rows you are keeping at their real values, zero out the ones you'd hand over, and enter a per-deal fee for just that scope.