Most contractors find out a job lost money at closeout — when there is nothing left to fix. The loss was visible weeks earlier. There just was not a system to see it.
A P&L shows the blended result of all jobs combined. If you run four jobs and three are profitable and one is losing money, the P&L might still look fine — until the losing job closes and the real number hits. By then there is nothing left to fix. Job costing shows each job individually, in real time, while you can still act.
Without weekly tracking of actual labor hours against estimate at current percentage complete, you do not see the variance until 70% of the labor budget is spent at 40% completion. That is not recoverable.
Out-of-scope work performed, verbally approved, and never formally billed. Shows up at closeout as a dispute. On most jobs, unbilled change orders represent $20,000–$80,000 in earned revenue never collected.
Without a WIP schedule, you do not know whether you are overbilled or underbilled on any active job. Both situations need to be visible and managed proactively.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes that match the way you estimate work — by phase, by unit, by trade. When you look at a job, you see actual cost versus budgeted cost at current percentage complete — not a blended P&L number.
Every week, actual labor hours are compared to budgeted hours at current percentage complete. If the job is 40% complete and 55% of labor hours are spent, that variance is visible in week three — not at closeout. You can adjust while the job is still running.
The WIP schedule tracks percentage complete versus percentage billed for every active job. Underbilled positions show immediately — submit corrected pay apps. Overbilled positions show the work to earn back.
This contractor had $24,000 in net profit on $5.2M in revenue — every year. No job-level visibility. Nothing to fix because nothing to see.
Net profit after SPM implemented job costing and WIP reporting. Same revenue. Same crews. Same trade. The jobs that were losing money got fixed because they became visible.
A free call with Josh takes 30 minutes. Bring your last P&L and current bank balance.
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