Construction Job Costing
Track costs by project or job to understand profitability and manage budgets on construction and contracting work.
What This Is
Job costing means tracking every dollar that goes into a project. Labor hours, material purchases, subcontractor payments, equipment rentals, permit fees. Each expense gets coded to a specific job so you can see the true cost of completing that project and whether you made money on it.
Most contractors look at their total monthly revenue and expenses. That gives you a general sense of how the business is doing, but it hides what’s really happening at the project level. One profitable commercial job can mask losses on three residential projects. Job costing breaks that out so you see the full picture.
What Gets Tracked
What Gets Tracked
Every expense tied to a project gets assigned to that job. Labor hours by worker, material costs with receipts, subcontractor invoices, equipment usage, and any other direct costs. We reconcile it all monthly and produce reports showing where your money went on each active job.
What You Receive
What You Receive
Job profitability reports showing revenue, costs, and margin for each project. Work-in-progress summaries for open jobs. Comparisons of estimated versus actual costs. Historical data you can use to improve future bids.
Why This Matters
A contractor finishes a bathroom remodel and invoices $28,000. The estimate had $6,000 in profit built in. But the tile guy charged more than expected. The plumber came back twice. Materials ran $1,200 over because of a change order. Actual profit was closer to $1,800. Without job costing, that contractor thinks the job went fine and bids the next one the same way.
Over time, these blind spots add up. You keep taking work that looks profitable on paper but consistently underperforms. You avoid certain jobs because they seem risky when the data would show they actually perform well. Your pricing stays stuck because you have no real cost data to adjust it with.
Guessing on Bids
Guessing on Bids
Every estimate becomes a gamble when you don’t know what similar jobs actually cost. You’re relying on memory and gut instinct instead of hard numbers. Some bids come in too high and you lose the work. Others come in too low and you lose money doing the work.
Cash Flow Confusion
Cash Flow Confusion
Your bank account shows $45,000 but $20,000 of that is deposits for jobs you haven’t started. Another $10,000 needs to go to subs next week. You can’t tell which completed jobs contributed to that balance and which ones quietly drained it.
What Changes
You start seeing patterns you couldn’t see before. Maybe your custom home projects consistently hit their margins while your remodels run over. Maybe certain subcontractors stay on budget and others don’t. Maybe your labor estimates are accurate but your materials estimates are always 15% low. The data tells you exactly where to focus.
Bidding gets more precise because you’re working from actual cost history instead of hopeful estimates. You know what a kitchen remodel really costs based on the last several you completed. You can price confidently because you’ve seen the numbers play out across similar jobs.
Data-Driven Pricing
Data-Driven Pricing
When you bid a new project, you can pull cost data from comparable jobs. You know your actual labor rates including the unbilled hours that always creep in. Your estimates reflect what things really cost, not what you hope they’ll cost.
Better Project Decisions
Better Project Decisions
You can identify which types of work make money and which don’t. Which customers are worth pursuing and which ones cost more than they pay. Where your margins are strongest and where they keep slipping. You make decisions based on facts instead of impressions.
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.