Construction Job Costing
Tracking labor, materials, and subcontractor costs by project so you can see which jobs make money and which ones don't.
The Work
Construction job costing is the practice of assigning every dollar that moves through your business to the specific project that caused it. Labor hours, lumber receipts, subcontractor invoices, equipment rental, permits, fuel. Each cost gets tagged to a job so you can see what each project actually earned after all the bills are paid.
Most contractors know their total revenue and their total expenses. What they often don’t know is which jobs made them money and which ones quietly cost them money. Job costing closes that gap. We build the structure inside your accounting system so the data is captured as the work happens, not pieced together months later.
How It Gets Set Up
How It Gets Set Up
We configure your chart of accounts and job structure inside QuickBooks Online so every transaction can be assigned to a project. Cost codes are mapped to the way your crews actually work. Payroll, vendor bills, and credit card charges all flow into the right job without extra effort from you.
What Gets Tracked
What Gets Tracked
Direct labor and burden, materials purchased for the job, subcontractor payments, equipment costs, and any other expense tied to a project. We separate change orders from the original contract so you can see how the scope shifted and whether you got paid for that shift.
Why It Matters
Construction margins are thin, and a single bad job can wipe out the profit from three good ones. Without job costing, you find that out at the end of the year when the tax return shows a number you didn’t expect. By then the bidding mistakes are already baked in and the cash is already gone.
The contractors who run profitable operations are not always the ones who bid the lowest or work the hardest. They are the ones who know their numbers. They know what a roof tear-off costs in labor hours. They know which type of job tends to run over. They use that information to bid the next project with confidence instead of guesswork.
The Bidding Problem
The Bidding Problem
If you don’t know what your last similar job actually cost, you are guessing on the next bid. Some contractors guess high and lose work. Others guess low and win work they shouldn’t have taken. Real cost data from past projects takes the guesswork out of the estimating process.
The Overrun Problem
The Overrun Problem
A job that runs over budget isn’t always obvious until the final invoices come in. By tracking costs as they accumulate, you see problems while there is still time to address them. You can talk to the customer about a change order before the job is finished instead of eating the cost.
What You Get
You get reports that show profit and loss by job, not just by company. You can pull up any project and see the budget, the actual costs to date, the committed costs still coming, and the gross margin. The numbers reflect reality, and they are available when you need them instead of months after the fact.
Over time, this builds into a library of real cost data from your own projects. The next bid is informed by what your crews actually produced on similar work. The conversations with your customers about change orders and overruns become factual instead of emotional. Your business decisions start coming from numbers instead of gut feel.
Profit by Project
Profit by Project
Each job has its own profit and loss. You can see at a glance which projects, which crews, and which types of work are making money. That tells you where to put your effort and where to walk away.
Better Bids Going Forward
Better Bids Going Forward
Historical cost data from completed jobs feeds into your estimating process. You stop bidding from memory and start bidding from records. The result is fewer surprises, healthier margins, and a business that grows on jobs you actually want to take.
Trusted Accounting for Small Businesses
First Step:
Start With a Call
Tell us about your business and what you need help with. We'll ask a few questions, evaluate your current situation, and let you know how GMJ can support your books, taxes, and day-to-day operations.
