Costs tracked to the project level so you can see true margin by job, catch overruns while the work is still running, and bid the next one better.
Plenty of companies are profitable overall and have no idea which projects got them there. The average hides everything. A few strong jobs carry a few bad ones, and because nobody separates them, the bad ones get bid again the same way next quarter. Job costing is how you stop guessing about that.
This is ground we know well. Five years as controller at a construction company meant living inside job cost reports, work in progress schedules, and the gap between what a job was supposed to cost and what it actually did. We bring that to construction firms and any project-based business across Lexington and Kentucky, including service companies and anyone billing work in discrete engagements rather than a steady monthly stream.
Every dollar that touches a job gets assigned to it: labor at fully loaded rates including burden, not just wages, materials, subcontractors, equipment, and an allocated share of overhead. Revenue gets recognized against the same job. The difference is real margin, and it's frequently not what people assumed. Labor burden alone catches a lot of companies out. If you're bidding at a $28 wage while the true cost with payroll taxes, insurance, and benefits is $41, every job is quietly less profitable than the estimate said. Getting the cost structure right is what makes every downstream number trustworthy, and it's usually the first thing that needs fixing.
A job cost report delivered after the project closes is a history lesson. Useful for the next bid, useless for this one. The version that changes outcomes runs during the work, comparing costs to date against percent complete, so a job trending 15 percent over shows up in week three instead of at final billing. That's when you still have options: a conversation with the customer about scope, a change order that should have been written, a crew adjustment, a subcontractor issue addressed before it compounds. Most overruns are visible early to whoever is looking. The problem is usually that nobody is looking until the invoice goes out.
For companies recognizing revenue over time, the WIP schedule is the document that ties everything together. Contract value, costs to date, estimated cost to complete, percent complete, revenue earned, and the over or under billing position on each job. Bonding companies and lenders ask for it, and a sloppy one damages your credibility fast. It's also genuinely useful internally: underbilled jobs are cash sitting on the table, and overbilled jobs mean you've collected money for work you still owe. The WIP schedule is where a lot of construction companies find cash they didn't know they had, simply by billing what they've already earned.
The real return on job costing shows up in estimating. Once you have honest historical cost data across dozens of completed jobs, patterns emerge that no one could see before. This customer's projects always run 8 percent over on labor. This type of work has better margin than the work you've been chasing. That crew is consistently faster on one kind of job. Jobs above a certain size go sideways because of how they're managed. This is where a company stops competing purely on price and starts choosing work deliberately. Knowing which jobs to walk away from is worth as much as knowing which to bid aggressively.
Yes. Any business delivering discrete projects benefits: professional services firms billing engagements, healthcare practices with distinct service lines, manufacturers running production orders. The mechanics are the same. Assign costs to the unit of work, compare to what you charged, learn from the difference. Construction just tends to have the most developed vocabulary around it.
Common situation. The feature is usually fine; what's missing is consistent coding, correct labor burden rates, and someone reviewing the reports. In most cases we can make your existing setup work rather than moving you to a new system. The firm's partners are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and Baum's Accounting Services has straightened out plenty of files that looked worse than yours.
Some, but less than expected. Time has to be coded to jobs and materials assigned correctly, which mostly means changing habits rather than adding steps. Once the routine settles in, most of the ongoing effort sits with the accounting side. Field crews typically just need to be consistent about which job number they write down.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
Accurate counts and costing so your margins are real, your balance sheet is honest, and shrinkage shows up before it's a year old.
Read moreStatements assembled from your records in the format lenders and bonding companies ask for when they want something formal.
Read moreA consistent set of statements and supporting schedules delivered on the same date each month, with a note on what changed and why.
Read moreBook a consultation and we will map out a first step you can actually act on.
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