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Take one real job, cost it honestly, and see what the report left out.

The working companion to Your Real Margin Is Lower Than You Think. The article explains why the number on your job-costing report is missing about a third of your costs. This is where you find your own gap.

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Get your own copy

• On a phone or computer: make your own copy in Google Sheets. It opens a fresh, editable copy in your own Google Drive.
• No Google account? Download it for Excel and open it in Excel or any spreadsheet app.
• On paper: print this page or save it as a PDF and work by hand.

Your overhead rate, true margin and the gaps fill in for you. Fill in the fields, tick the boxes as you go, and the page becomes your costing record.

Pull real numbers off real records. A guess here produces a comfortable answer that hides the problem.

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Part 1. Your overhead rate

Everything below depends on this one number. Pull last year's profit and loss statement (P&L) and do it once.

Tick each bucket as you pull it into the overhead total. Miss one and the whole worksheet flatters you.

• [ ] Office and admin payroll, front desk included
• [ ] Accounts receivable (AR) and billing labor, the hours spent chasing slow program payments
• [ ] Owner and management compensation
• [ ] Software and platform subscriptions, the whole stack
• [ ] Insurance, every line
• [ ] Vehicles: payments, fuel, maintenance, insurance
• [ ] Rent, utilities, shop costs
• [ ] Marketing and business development
• [ ] Compliance, licensing, certifications, training
• [ ] Professional fees: legal, accounting, IT

Total revenue, last 12 months: