Free Educational Tool
What does one month of your business cost when you cannot come in?
Every owner knows the revenue number. Fewer can name the other one: what the business owes in a month whether or not its owner can work — the rent, the payroll, the loan payment, the leases that bill on their own calendar. That number is what overhead expense coverage is sized from, so this tool does one honest thing: it prices your month, then shows what a realistic recovery would cost against it. Expense tally only — no premiums, no quotes, and nothing you enter leaves your browser. For this exercise applied to one business start to finish, see a solo practice, a loan, and the month the owner could not work.
Why the monthly number is the whole exercise
Overhead expense coverage pays the business's continuing expenses while the owner recovers — it is sized against an expense schedule, not an income. So the useful first step is producing that schedule honestly: the costs that continue when production stops.
What counts, what doesn't, and the two tax facts owners ask about
What counts: the fixed obligations that keep drafting without you — rent or mortgage on the space, utilities, staff salaries and payroll costs, loan and lease payments, insurance, accounting, software, phones. What doesn't: your own compensation (that is your individual disability policy's job, a separate instrument sized separately) and costs that stop when production stops, like clinical supplies consumed per patient or cost of goods sold.
The two tax facts: overhead expense premiums are generally deductible to the business as a necessary business expense — the mirror image of key-person coverage — and benefits are taxable as income when received, which is why the covered amount is sized against the gross schedule. Both points are general in nature and your CPA's to confirm on your facts. Benefit periods are typically 12 to 24 months by design: the coverage carries the business through recovery, or through an orderly sale on your terms, not to retirement.
Price your month
The expenses that continue without you
Monthly figures, best estimates. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs entirely in your browser.
The fixed layer
Obligations that bill on their own calendar, regardless of production.
What continues without you
Revenue the business would still collect with you out — an associate's production, recurring contracts. For a true solo operation this is often zero.
Your month — due whether or not you can work
$0
Enter your monthly figures above to price the month.
Gross monthly overhead
$0
Uncovered after continuing revenue
$0
Exposure over 4 months
$0
| Fixed layer (rent, utilities, insurance, other) | $0 |
| People (salaries & payroll costs) | $0 |
| Debt & leases (loans, equipment) | $0 |
| Continuing revenue offset | $0 |
The uncovered monthly figure is what an overhead expense policy is sized against; the recovery-period total is what that figure becomes without one — from savings, a credit line drawn at the worst moment, or letting staff go, which quietly turns a months-long problem into a permanent one.
Where this fits
Overhead coverage is half the answer
The month you cannot work creates two problems, and this tool prices only one of them.
The other half, and the loan question underneath both
Overhead coverage keeps the business alive; it pays the practice's bills, not your household's. Your own income is protected by an individual disability policy — a separate instrument with its own sizing, which our unprotected-income calculator walks through. The two are designed together so the business and the household are each covered by the right policy, without overlap.
And if an SBA or practice loan sits underneath the business, note what the closing checklist covered and what it didn't: lenders require life insurance on the borrower, but nothing at closing asks who makes the loan payment while the owner is alive and cannot work. That gap is exactly the loan line in the tally above. Our SBA loan insurance calculator covers the life-coverage side of the same loan.
Want the month priced properly?
A first conversation is exploratory and at no cost. We price the month against your real expense schedule with your CPA's numbers, set elimination and benefit periods to match your cash cushion, and put the design in writing before any product is discussed.
How the second opinion works