CONSTRUCTION JOB COSTING EXPLAINED.
Job costing is tracking every dollar you spend on a specific project, labor, material, equipment, subcontractors, and direct job expenses, so you know what that project cost to build. Without it, the P&L tells you whether the company made money. With it, you know which of the six active projects made money and which ones lost it. Those are two completely different levels of financial visibility.
Most subcontractors know they need job costing and have been told to get it set up. Most have tried and finished with either nothing usable or a system so complex nobody touches it. The reason is that job costing has to be built to match how the work is really done, meaning the specific trades, phases, and cost types inside your business. A generic chart of accounts doesn't produce useful job cost data in whichever software it sits in, which is why the structure comes before the platform every single time.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Job costing means every expense, every labor hour, every material purchase, every equipment charge, and every subcontractor invoice, is coded to the specific project it belongs to before it hits the books.
Every project breaks into seven cost categories. Material by commodity type, concrete, PVC, wire, or rebar, with a miscellaneous line for items under $10K. Subcontractor by trade, with a miscellaneous line for subs under $10K. Equipment, split into owned, rented, trucks, fuel, and fees, each as its own subcategory. Tools as a lump sum budgeted at 1 percent of total labor dollars, with specific tools over $10K getting their own line. Labor by work type and phase, always in fully burdened dollars, tracking both hours and dollars because burden rates differ by employee. Direct job expense, covering superintendent time, foreman, PM, safety, job trailers, permits, and legal. Other, covering contingency, bond, specialty insurance, and project-specific financing.
The test of whether it works is whether a project manager can pull it up without calling accounting. If the PM has to request a report and wait, the structure is too complex or the data is too late, and either one produces the same result: nobody uses it.
WHY JOB COSTING BREAKS DOWN.
Too complex, 1,500 line items nobody can read
Software implementation teams build cost structures that cover every possible scenario on every possible job. The result is so granular that project managers can't find the right code, so they enter time to whatever looks close and the data becomes useless. The fix is seven categories, subcategories by trade-specific type, and phase breakdown for labor only on projects running over 3 months, simple enough that a PM can navigate it in 30 seconds.
Too generic, top-level categories only
One code for all labor and one code for all material. The books are technically accurate and produce no actionable information at all. You know total labor was $187K, and you don't know that underground labor was on budget while above-slab ran 22 percent over. The fix is a minimum of one subcategory per cost type, matched to how you estimate the work.
Estimating and job costing don't match
The estimate carries six labor phases and the job cost system carries one labor code. You can't compare bid to actual because the two are written in different languages. The fix is building the job cost code structure to mirror the estimate structure, and the alignment meeting, estimator, PM, bookkeeper, and CFO in one room mapping every estimate line to a cost code, is the session that makes the whole system work.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $28 an hour carpenter costs $38 to $44 an hour fully burdened once you add payroll taxes at 7.65 percent, workers comp, which varies by trade and often runs 8 to 15 percent, health insurance, and 401k. That's why labor has to be tracked in burdened dollars rather than wage dollars. Track hours and dollars both, because burden rates differ from one employee to the next.
With one labor code, you know total labor was $187K on the job. You don't know that underground labor came in on budget while above-slab ran 22 percent over. The total is correct and the information you needed is gone, which is the whole argument for subcategories.
The code structure can be built in one working session, typically 2 to 4 hours with the right person in the room. The alignment meeting takes another 2 hours. The first full month of data running through the new structure takes one billing cycle to produce a usable cost-to-complete, and CFOS builds the structure during onboarding with the first cost-to-complete report inside 60 days of engagement start.
THE SEVEN COST CATEGORIES.
Material breaks out by commodity type, concrete, PVC, wire, or rebar, with a miscellaneous line for anything under $10K. Subcontractor breaks out by trade, with the same miscellaneous line for subs under $10K. Equipment splits into owned equipment, rented equipment, trucks, fuel, and fees, each one carrying its own subcategory rather than sitting in a single equipment bucket.
Tools go in as a lump sum budgeted at 1 percent of total labor dollars, with any specific tool over $10K getting its own line. Labor breaks out by work type and phase, always in fully burdened dollars, with hours and dollars both tracked because burden rates vary by employee. Direct job expense covers superintendent time, foreman, PM, safety, job trailers, permits, and legal, and Other covers contingency, bond, specialty insurance, and project-specific financing.
The test of a working structure is whether the project manager can see where the job stands without asking anybody. If a PM has to request a report and wait for it, the data is either too complex to navigate or too old to act on. Both of those produce the same result, which is a structure nobody opens and a set of numbers nobody trusts.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
Pricing
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
