PRODUCTION WITHOUT COST IS SPEED. COST WITHOUT PRODUCTION IS SPEND.
Field production tracking and job costing answer different questions. Production tracking tells you what was built, meaning yards poured, feet drilled, and square feet framed. Job costing tells you what it cost. Together they tell you whether the cost was efficient. Separately they tell you almost nothing useful. A crew that poured 180 yards in 9 hours spent $2,700 in labor. Was that on track? It depends on the estimate. Without tying production to cost, that question can't be answered until the job closes.
Every bid you write already contains production assumptions. So many yards a day, so much pipe an hour, so much framing a week. Those rates are what the price was built on, so they're the standard the job should be measured against. When job costing gets built on a different structure than the estimate, the two sets of numbers can't be compared at all, and the only report you get is the closeout. Tying the two together doesn't require new software. It requires the same units on both sides and one report every Friday.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Cost per unit is the labor cost of a job phase divided by the units the crew installed in that phase, which makes it the only number that tells you whether the money you spent bought the production you paid for.
The unit is what makes the comparison work. Cost per hour tells you what was spent. Cost per unit tells you what was accomplished per dollar, which is a different question and a more useful one. A crew working 9 hours at $300 per hour that installed 180 yards has a cost per yard of $15. A crew working 12 hours at $300 per hour that installed 300 yards has a cost per yard of $12. The second crew worked more hours and cost more in total, and it was the more efficient one.
TWO SYSTEMS, NO OVERLAP.
Field tracks output. Accounting tracks input.
The foreman logs hours, the PM tracks schedule, and nobody ties what got built to what it cost to build it. Accounting knows the labor number and the field knows the production number, and neither side can say whether the labor spend bought the units it was supposed to buy. The two halves of the answer live in two different buildings.
Production rate problems surface at job close
Without production context, a labor overrun is ambiguous. A task that took 110 hours against an estimate of 80 could be a crew productivity problem or it could be undocumented scope growth, and those two causes require completely different responses. Cost variance by itself can't tell them apart. Worse, the question only becomes answerable at the end of the job, when neither response is available anymore.
Estimates are built on production rates, so job costs should be measured against them
Every bid has embedded production assumptions: concrete yards a day, pipe an hour, framing rate a week. That's what the price was built on. When job costing is structured on categories that don't use those same units, the estimate and the actuals are written in different languages and no meaningful comparison exists. The estimate becomes a document nobody can check.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
The master unit is cubic yards per hour. When the estimate assumed 110 and the GPS data shows the crew achieved 75, cost per yard just went up 47%. Tying machine telemetry to cost shows that by Friday instead of at closeout, which is the difference between a fix and a post-mortem.
Blending every pour into one rate obscures which types are underperforming. A crew placing 85 yards on grade and 40 on deck isn't universally slow, because those are two different operations. The single-rate assumption in the estimate was the problem, and splitting the rate by pour type is what makes the variance readable.
Production falls off as the work goes up, and tracking floor by floor is what exposes the curve. A single labor code can't tell you whether the estimate accounted for the efficiency loss with height. Once the rate is tracked by floor, the next bid on a similar building is priced off your own history rather than a flat average.
On fixed-rate work, production is the only margin variable left, which makes tracking it more important rather than less. A crew operating at 60% of standard production is losing money every day and nothing on the invoice says so, because the rate didn't change. Only the units per day changed.
An excavation contractor's weekly production-to-cost report flagged a cut operation operating 28% under rate in week three. The cause was a haul route that had doubled cycle time. The fix, a second access point, cost $4K and saved a projected $47K labor overrun. The report didn't solve the problem. It made the problem visible while a $4K solution still existed.
WHAT WE BUILD.
The crew logs production daily by phase and unit type, meaning yards, linear feet, square feet, or tons. It takes 5 minutes at the end of the day. The log uses the same unit definitions as the estimate so the comparison is direct: estimated 280 yards this week, installed 220 yards, labor was $4,100 instead of $3,200, cost per yard $18.64 actual against $11.43 estimated. That's a number somebody can act on.
By the end of each week you have units installed against plan, labor cost against plan, and cost per unit against estimated cost per unit. Variance above 10% triggers a review. Is it crew productivity, a soil condition change, or an undocumented scope addition? Each cause requires a different response, and the response is only available while the job is still in progress.
The monthly cost-to-complete uses the production rate from the prior 30 days rather than the original estimate rate to project remaining cost. If the job averaged 75 yards per hour in month one against an estimated 110, the month-two forecast uses 75. That turns the projection into a prediction instead of a hope built on an assumption the job already disproved.
Weekly is the frequency that turns this from a concept into a control. Monthly reporting is an autopsy. Our clients produce the report Friday afternoon: field units from the site, labor cost from payroll, variance by cost code on one summary, about 15 minutes per job. A crew at 36% under estimated production shows in the first week of the report instead of at 60% complete when the labor budget is already spent.
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. The one-time onboarding fee is right here in the table.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 to $3,300 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $5,300 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $8,300 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $11,800 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $14,900 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $17,650 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $22,400 | $9,000 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually | Quoted individually |
The onboarding fee covers migrating your books back to the start of your last taxable year and getting you fully operational in 60 days. It's billed once, with your first invoice. It's the same for all three tiers. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
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. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
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 and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
Everything in Core, plus the bookkeeping and bank reconciliations done for you, and the job costing and WIP software set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed every month. Use your own online software, or move to ours and we cover it.
A bookkeeper we choose does the books and reconciliations. No payroll.
You approve, and the money side gets handled.
Everything in Strategic, plus a controller we choose who handles your bills and receivables for you the way an in-house controller would. They call vendors, pay the bills and keep the accounting current. We plan the cash flow first, and you approve every payment because it is your money.
A controller we choose does the payables and receivables. No payroll, no pay applications, no collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
