Calculator
Shoebox scanning quote calculator for photo organizers
Estimate the image count, the fee and the hourly rate you would actually earn before you quote a client's boxes.
Free tools
Calculators for pricing and planning family archive projects
Two working calculators for the numbers photo organizers argue with most: what a shoebox project should cost, and how long a family's originals will sit in your studio.
Estimating in this trade is unusual because the two biggest variables are hidden inside a closed box. You do not know how many prints are in there, and you do not know how many of them are stuck to album pages, curled, or in sizes that break a feeder. Every organizer eventually builds a rough model in her head. These calculators make that model explicit so you can test it against a real project instead of a feeling.
Both are free, run in your browser, and store nothing. Change the defaults to match your own throughput, your own per image rate and your own bench hours. If a result looks wrong for your studio, the interesting part is which input you disagree with, because that is usually the number that has been quietly costing you money on every quote.
Calculator
How long will a client's originals sit in your studio
Estimate the custody window for a family archive project and the number of projects that size your bench can actually finish in a quarter.
Working document
The shoebox intake and handback checklist
A working document for the four stages where photo organizing projects go wrong: the client's home, intake day, the capture bench, and the return of the originals.
The shoebox math should not cost you anything
Every photo organizer already runs these numbers by hand. You count a measured inch of loose 4x6 prints, multiply it across four boxes, subtract the magnetic album pages you know will come apart one print at a time, and try to land on a fee before the client changes the subject. The custody question gets the same treatment on the back of an intake sheet: capture hours divided by the bench hours you can honestly give the job, plus the days a box sits waiting for pickup after the work is done.
Putting that arithmetic on a page with your own per image rate, your own blended capture rate and your own prep hours in it does not require an account, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere. Use it to decide whether a paid assessment is worth charging separately, to see what your effective hourly rate really is once unsticking and sorting are counted, or to work out whether you can hold a fourth family's originals this quarter. Even if a calculator only tells you which of your own assumptions is wrong, it has paid for itself on the next quote.
When the shoebox math comes out worse than expected
If the effective hourly rate or the custody window landed below what you tell clients you charge, the fix is usually tracking rather than pricing. PaperKeepsake holds the box counts, the numbered batches and the rescan log so a confirmed image count exists by the time you invoice. Ask for a demo and we will run it against a project already on your shelf.