FIELD REPORTING FINANCIAL DISCIPLINE THE FOUNDATION OF FINANCIAL CONTROL.
Every financial output in a construction company, meaning job cost reports, cost to completes, WIP schedules, and CEO Reports, is only as accurate as the field data that feeds it. When timecards are submitted weekly from memory, material usage is logged from invoices rather than from what was consumed, and change order work disappears into base scope cost codes, every downstream financial output is unreliable. Field reporting discipline isn't an HR issue. It's a financial control issue.
SPM can't produce an accurate cost to complete from bad field data, and neither can any other CFO. The financial infrastructure starts in the field: a foreman who submits a daily timecard by cost code, a superintendent who logs equipment hours by project, and a PM who creates a change order cost code before the first day of mobilization. Those three habits cost almost nothing and they decide whether every report above them is worth reading. That's why this belongs in the first 30 days of an engagement rather than somewhere on a wish list.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Field reporting discipline is the daily habit of logging labor, equipment hours, material usage, and change order work by project and cost code on the day the work happens.
Job cost reports, cost to completes, WIP schedules, and CEO Reports are all downstream products of field data: weekly timecard entry, daily material usage logs, foreman production counts, and equipment hours. When that field data is accurate, timely, and consistently categorized, every output above it's reliable. When it's inaccurate, late, or categorized inconsistently, every output above it's wrong or at best unreliable.
A cost to complete built on timecards that are two weeks behind isn't a cost to complete. It's a guess with formatting.
THE FOUR FIELD FAILURES THAT BREAK JOB COST.
Timecards submitted weekly instead of daily
A foreman filling out a week of time on Friday afternoon is reconstructing four days of work from memory. He will get the total hours close and the cost code split wrong, because nobody remembers which afternoon went to which phase. Job cost by phase is the number the whole system runs on, so a wrong split is worse than a missing one.
Material recorded when the invoice comes in, not when it's used
Material logged off the supplier invoice rather than off consumption puts the cost in the wrong week, and sometimes in the wrong month. That mismatches material cost against the production it belongs to by days or weeks. Unit cost and cost to complete both go soft as soon as that happens, because the cost side and the quantity side are describing different periods.
Equipment hours logged to the wrong project
An operator moving between sites gets his hours logged to whichever job the office assumed he was on. The machine cost posts to one project and the production it produced sits on another. Neither job cost report is right after that, and the error is nearly impossible to find later without the operator's own log.
Change order work coded to base scope
When a change order cost code doesn't exist yet, the work goes to the base scope code because the foreman has to put it somewhere. The cost is now buried inside the contracted work, which makes the base scope look like it overran and makes the extra work look free. That's also the moment you lose the documentation you would have used to bill it.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Clients who put daily timecard discipline in place inside the first 30 days of an engagement produce cost to completes accurate enough to catch real job losses while the job is still open. Clients who don't are managing on a 4 to 6 week lag on their own field data. That lag is the difference between a job you can still do something about and a job you're reporting on.
FIELD REPORTING DISCIPLINE IN 30 DAYS.
Every employee, every day, by project and cost code, with the foreman submitting by 6pm. Non compliance is a conversation the first time it happens. After that it's a performance issue, and treating it as one is what makes the standard real.
Every project gets a change order cost code before day one. Any work the foreman believes is outside scope gets coded there immediately, and the office sorts out the billing after the fact. The code captures the cost while you can still bill for it, and that window closes fast once the job is complete.
Log material usage daily at the project level and reconcile it to delivery receipts weekly. The delivery invoice and the usage log should match within a reasonable tolerance. Where they don't, the difference is waste, theft, or incorrect logging, and all three of those are operational problems that need somebody looking at them.
The CFO function reviews the week's timecard entries against the project schedule and flags anything that looks off before it becomes a month of bad data. Five minutes per project on Monday morning catches the problems the monthly close would otherwise lock in. It's the cheapest quality control in the entire financial system.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
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.
