Here’s a question most contractors can’t answer off the top of their head: what was your actual gross margin on the last three jobs you completed?
Not what you bid. What you actually made after labor, materials, subs, equipment, and all the little costs that didn’t get tracked because nobody coded them to the right job.
If you don’t know that number, your chart of accounts is working against you.
The Problem With Most Contractor Books
General bookkeepers set up your chart of accounts the same way they’d set up a landscaping company or a dental office. Revenue goes in one bucket. Expenses go in a handful of categories. Maybe they created a “Cost of Goods Sold” line, maybe they didn’t.
The result? You can see that your company made money last quarter. But you can’t see which jobs drove the profit and which ones quietly lost money. You can’t see if your labor burden on commercial work is different from residential. You can’t tell if that big hospital project was actually worth the headache.
Without job-level visibility, every bid you submit is based on instinct instead of data. And instinct gets expensive when margins are thin.
What We Build
We set up your entire financial structure around how you actually bid, build, and bill work. That means:
A chart of accounts built for your trade. Not a generic template. A structure designed for the way electricians, plumbers, HVAC contractors, or whatever trade you’re in actually categorize costs. Labor, materials, equipment, subs, and overhead, broken out the way your estimator thinks about them.
Cost codes that match your bids. When your estimator breaks a job into phases, rough-in, trim, fixtures, service, your books should reflect those same divisions. That way you can compare estimated cost to actual cost at the phase level, not just the job level.
Job-level tracking from day one. Every expense gets coded to a job. Every labor hour gets allocated. Every material purchase gets assigned. When you pull a report on Job #2247, you see exactly what that job cost you, broken out by category and phase.
Reporting that answers real questions. Which jobs are over budget? Where is labor running higher than your bid? Are your material costs creeping up on a specific type of work? You’ll have the reports to answer those questions without digging through bank statements.
Why This Matters When You Bid
Contractors who track job costs accurately bid better. It’s that simple.
When you know your actual labor burden on the last five commercial electrical jobs, you stop guessing on the next one. When you can see that material costs on concrete work ran 12% higher than estimated across the board, you adjust before you eat another margin hit.
Job costing isn’t accounting busywork. It’s the foundation of profitable bidding. And when paired with regular WIP schedule preparation, it gives you complete visibility into every open project.
How the Setup Works
We typically get a contractor’s job costing structure built and running within two to three weeks. Here’s what that looks like:
First, we review how you bid work. We look at your estimating categories, your typical job phases, and the cost types that matter most in your trade.
Then we build your chart of accounts, cost codes, and job structure to mirror that bidding process. If you’re on QuickBooks, we configure classes, items, and customer:job hierarchies. If you’re on Sage or Foundation, we set up the job cost modules properly.
Finally, we train your team on how to code expenses correctly going forward. Simple rules. No accounting degree required. And we review the coding weekly to catch mistakes before they compound.
Who Needs This
If any of these sound familiar, your job costing needs work:
- You bid at 15% margin but your books show 8% and you’re not sure why
- Your P&L shows total revenue and total expenses but nothing by job
- Your estimator and your bookkeeper use completely different categories
- You’ve never pulled a job cost report that you actually trusted
- Your bonding company or bank keeps asking for job-level financials you can’t produce
Let’s Look at Your Numbers
We’ll review your current chart of accounts and job costing setup for free. If it’s working, we’ll tell you. If it’s not, we’ll show you exactly what needs to change and what that would look like.