Job Costing 101: Know Which Jobs Are Actually Making You Money

You're booked out for months. Crews are busy. Revenue is coming in. But at the end of the year, the profit isn't what you expected. Sound familiar?

The problem usually isn't that you're not doing enough work. It's that you don't know which work is actually making you money — and which jobs are quietly eating your margins.

What Is Job Costing?

Job costing is simply tracking all the costs associated with a specific job — materials, labor, subcontractors, equipment, permits, everything — and comparing those costs to what you billed for that job.

It tells you, job by job, whether you made money or lost it. And more importantly, it tells you why.

Why It Matters

Without job costing, you're averaging everything together. Your overall P&L might look okay, but hidden inside could be jobs that lost money — subsidized by the ones that did well.

Job costing helps you:

• Identify your most (and least) profitable job types
• Know when your estimates are too low
• Catch cost overruns before they spiral
• Make informed decisions about which work to pursue
• Set prices that actually protect your margins

Getting Started

The good news is you don't need fancy software to start. QuickBooks Online has built-in job costing features that work well for most contractors. The key is consistency — every expense needs to be tagged to the right job.

If that sounds like a lot of work on top of running your business, that's where we come in. We handle job costing for our contractor clients as part of our monthly bookkeeping — so you get the insights without the extra work.