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Cost every commercial job, or you will not know which ones paid
A RocketLevel guide, backed by decades of experience in the trade. Plenty of busy commercial shops have no idea which jobs actually made money. Much of the profit leaks out on the job, through labor logged late, equipment left running uncharged, supplements never written, and the gap between the estimate and the actual. Job-cost each commercial loss so you know, job by job, whether the work was worth it.
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The shift: job costing starts in the field. The numbers you need are captured, or lost, there every day, and the books at month-end can only report what the field recorded.
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Where commercial margin leaks
- Labor logged late or rounded. Hours that go in days later, or get guessed, never match reality.
- Equipment running uncharged. Dehumidifiers and air movers left on a job and not billed to it.
- Supplements never written. Hidden scope discovered and never documented into a supplement.
- The estimate-versus-actual gap. No one compares what you bid to what it cost, so the same mistake repeats.
- Subcontractor and material creep. Costs that drift above the estimate without a change order.
How to job-cost a commercial loss
- Capture labor daily, by job, in real time (the daily time and materials (T&M) log does this).
- Track equipment to the job, by the day it is on site.
- Tag every material and subcontractor cost to the job as it happens.
- At closeout, compare actual cost to the estimate, line by line, and write down what moved.
- Calculate the real margin: revenue minus direct cost minus a fair overhead allocation.
The walkthrough, on one closed job
One commercial water loss, billed and collected at $180,000. Every figure below is computed from the ones above it, so you can check any line.