Skilled Trades
Job costing and parts tracking for trade businesses. Know which service calls and installations actually make money.
The Trade
An HVAC tech gets dispatched to a no-AC call in July. He diagnoses a failed capacitor, replaces it from truck stock, and collects $285. The part cost $18 at distributor pricing. Labor was 45 minutes including drive time. Looks profitable. But that capacitor was bought six months ago in a bulk order that got expensed immediately. The truck payment, insurance, fuel, and tool wear never get allocated to individual calls. The actual profit on that $285 service call might be $150 or it might be $60. Without job-level tracking, there is no way to know if flat-rate pricing actually covers real costs.
Skilled trades run on a mix of service calls and installations. Service calls are quick, lower ticket, high frequency. Installations are bigger jobs with more materials and longer labor hours. Both require tracking time, parts, and overhead to understand what is profitable. Add in warranty callbacks that generate no revenue but still consume labor and materials, and the numbers get complicated fast.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and licensed trade professionals across the Phoenix metro. Solo operators and small crews doing residential and commercial service work, repairs, and installations.
What Complicates It
What Complicates It
Mix of service calls and installations with different economics. Parts inventory sitting on trucks. Warranty work that costs money but produces no revenue. Seasonal demand swings for HVAC. Vehicle and tool expenses. Payroll for techs at different experience levels and pay rates.
What We Handle
Every service call and installation gets tracked with labor, materials, and allocated overhead. You see actual costs versus what you charged. This tells you whether your flat-rate pricing works or if certain job types consistently lose money. We configure QuickBooks so you can see profitability by job type. Service calls versus installations. Residential versus commercial. Specific service categories like water heater replacements or panel upgrades.
Parts sitting on trucks represent real money. We help track truck stock so you know what inventory you have and what gets used on each job. This prevents both stockouts and the slow leak of untracked parts. Tax preparation captures the deductions trade businesses often miss. Vehicle expenses, tool purchases, licensing and continuing education, phone and technology costs. Quarterly estimates account for seasonal income so a busy summer does not create a tax crisis the following April.
Job Costing by Service Type
Job Costing by Service Type
Service calls tracked separately from installations. Labor, materials, and drive time allocated to each job. Historical data shows actual costs by category so you can evaluate whether flat-rate pricing holds up. QuickBooks configured for skilled trades with job costing reports that match how you actually work.
Inventory, Payroll, and Tax
Inventory, Payroll, and Tax
Truck stock tracked as inventory rather than expensed when purchased. Payroll for techs at different levels with overtime calculated correctly. Tax returns prepared with vehicle deductions, equipment depreciation, and trade-specific expenses. Quarterly estimates based on your seasonal patterns.
Common Problems
The most common problem is materials purchased but never allocated to jobs. You buy $3,000 in parts from the distributor and expense it when the bill comes. Those parts sit on the truck for weeks or months. When you finally use them on a job, there is no connection between the material cost and the revenue it generated. Your monthly profit and loss swings wildly based on when you happened to buy parts, not when you actually performed profitable work. Service calls show artificially high margins because the parts were never tied to them.
Warranty callbacks are another hidden cost. You fixed that AC unit three months ago and now you are back because it failed again. Labor, parts, fuel. All consumed but no invoice to show for it. If nobody tracks warranty work, you have no idea how much callbacks cost annually. Some contractors discover that 8 to 10 percent of their labor goes to warranty work they never accounted for. That is money walking out the door quietly.
Parts Not Tied to Jobs
Parts Not Tied to Jobs
Materials get expensed when purchased instead of allocated to the job where they were used. Monthly expenses do not match monthly work performed. Gross margins look different depending on when parts orders happened to hit. You cannot tell if a $350 service call made $180 or $60 because the parts cost was never connected to it.
Warranty Costs Are Invisible
Warranty Costs Are Invisible
Callbacks consume labor and materials with no offsetting revenue. Without tracking, you cannot see how much warranty work costs annually or which job types generate the most callbacks. A 2 percent callback rate on one equipment brand versus 15 percent on another affects which work you should actually pursue.
What Changes
Job costing shows real profitability by service type. You know that residential service calls average 34 percent margin while commercial maintenance contracts run at 22 percent. Water heater installations make money. Complex diagnostics where you spend two hours and only bill for one do not. This data informs pricing decisions, which work to pursue, and which customers are not worth the hassle.
Parts used get tied to the jobs that consumed them. Truck inventory becomes visible. You order what you need instead of guessing and overbuying. Warranty callbacks get tracked so you can identify problem patterns. Specific equipment, certain installers, particular job types. Tax returns capture every deduction you are entitled to, and quarterly estimates prevent April from becoming a cash crisis after a profitable summer or winter season.
Pricing Based on Real Costs
Pricing Based on Real Costs
Historical job data shows what things actually cost including the hidden stuff. Drive time, parts consumption, warranty risk. Flat-rate pricing gets validated against actual numbers. Unprofitable job types get repriced or dropped. You focus on work that consistently makes money instead of staying busy on jobs that quietly lose it.
Inventory Control and Tax Strategy
Inventory Control and Tax Strategy
Truck stock tracked so you know what you have and what got used where. Warranty work visible so you can address patterns instead of bleeding money quietly. Maximum deductions captured on vehicles, tools, licensing, and trade-specific expenses. Seasonal income handled with quarterly estimates that match your actual cash flow.
Full-Service Bookkeeping for Greater Phoenix
The Next Step:
A Quick Conversation
Tell us about your situation. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear price to handle the work.