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Find Out Which Jobs Actually Made Money
Costs tracked to the job so profitability is a number per project, not a guess at year end.
What Job Costing Tracks
Job costing assigns every direct cost to the project that caused it, so each job carries its own profit and loss. Without it, a business can be profitable overall while losing money consistently on one type of work and never know.
- Labor hours and burdened labor cost by job
- Materials and supplier invoices coded to the job
- Subcontractor costs by job and by trade
- Equipment and rental charges allocated
- Change orders tracked against the original estimate
- Overhead allocated on a consistent, defensible basis
What The Reporting Answers
- Which jobs made money and which ones did not
- Where actual cost diverged from the estimate, and at what stage
- Which crews, trades, or job types are consistently profitable
- Whether change orders were captured and billed
- Whether the estimating assumptions are still true
The estimate-to-actual comparison is the one that changes behavior. Bidding gets better when the last twenty jobs have been measured against what they were bid at.
Setting It Up
The structure comes first. The chart of accounts needs cost categories that map to how you estimate, jobs or classes have to be set up in the accounting file, and payroll has to capture hours by job. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop both support this, with Desktop still holding an advantage for long job histories.
Once it is running, job costing feeds directly into the workers' compensation audit and into the financial statements a bonding company asks for.
Job Costing For Huntsville, AL Contractors
Construction, plumbing, and general contracting businesses across Huntsville, AL, Harvest, AL, Athens, AL, and the surrounding communities use this most. Moving companies and other project-based service businesses run the same structure with different cost categories.
Before You Call About Job Costing
Do I need special software for job costing?
Not necessarily. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop both handle it when the file is set up for it. The structure matters more than the platform.
How is overhead allocated to jobs?
On a consistent basis you can defend, most often labor hours or direct cost. What matters is that the same method is used every period so the comparisons hold.
Can job costing be added to an existing file?
Yes. Going forward is straightforward. Applying it to jobs already in progress takes a reclassification pass, and how far back to go is a judgment call worth making deliberately.
Often Handled Alongside This
Construction Accounting
Job-level costing, retainage tracked apart from ordinary receivables, work in progress reported for jobs crossing a period end, change orders captured when approved, and subcontractor documentation collected before payment rather than at audit.
Read moreWorkers' Compensation Audit Support
Payroll organized by classification code, overtime adjusted where the rules allow, owner exclusions applied, and subcontractor certificates matched to payments before the auditor arrives, then the resulting worksheet checked before the bill is accepted.
Read moreMonthly Financial Reporting Package
Profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, aging, and prior-period comparisons built from the closed month, delivered with a written summary of what moved and what to watch.
Read moreTalk To The Owner, Not An Intake Screener
Sara Humphrey handles the first conversation herself, so nothing has to be explained twice.