Builders find out whether a job made money once the job is over, which is far too late for the one running now. The Budget & margin card on every job puts the revised contract — the signed contract plus approved changes — against each phase's budget, what purchase orders have committed, what has actually been spent and what it's projected to cost, so a phase running hot shows up while there are still phases left to adjust. The labour panel keeps its own estimate-against-actual for the crews. It's all one system, built only for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the phases are the stages you already run the job by.
Also called: did we make money on this job · job costing · margin per job · actual vs estimate · budget vs actual · job budget · budget and margin · committed cost · projected margin · cost to complete
Is this job making money? Answered on the closed card
Shut, the Budget & margin card still says what matters: Margin 18.7%, the phase that's over budget, and what's not billed yet — next to the construction loan and the selections on the same job. Nobody has to open anything to know which job needs attention today.
The one job losing money looks exactly like the five that aren't, until somebody opens its numbers.
An owner running six jobs won't open six cards to find the one in trouble. Putting the margin on the outside means the bad news finds him — the difference between feeling in control and feeling ambushed at month-end.
What the job is worth now — the signed contract plus approved changes
The top of the card is the money coming in: the contract, read from the signed contract when there is one, approved changes with how many are approved and pending, the revised contract — what the job is worth now — and what's been invoiced and collected. When a construction lender pays in draws, what it has funded shows here too. It's the number the customer actually signed, not a figure re-typed into a costing sheet where it can drift.
The costing sheet still says $420,000 after three approved changes, so the margin looks thinner than it is and the owner worries about the wrong job.
Margin is a fraction, and a wrong top line makes every number under it a lie. Reading the contract from the signed document and adding only approved changes means the owner measures against the money he'll actually receive — the one number he can plan around.
Budget, committed, actual and projected — phase by phase
Each phase shows its budget, what purchase orders have committed, what's actually been spent — materials delivered or paid for, labour at what each person is paid, approved expenses — and what it's projected to cost. Projected never drops below what a phase has already promised or spent, so Siding & Roofing shows −$5,630 the week its spending passed its budget, not when the job closes. A phase with no budget shows no variance at all, instead of a false alarm.
The steel crew ran forty hours long in week three, and the overrun showed up in the books in week nine.
A phase can't finish under what it has already promised. Counting a purchase order the day it's sent, not the day the bill arrives, gives the owner two or three weeks of warning — time to talk to the crew, swap a supplier, or price the next change properly.
Four buckets per phase — materials, labour, subs, other
Set budgets turns the table into the budget itself: materials, labour, subs and other for each phase, saved as you leave each box. Budgets live in this one place — the labour panel no longer keeps its own copy — so the number you plan with is the number you're measured against.
Two screens each held a version of the phase budget, and the one somebody updated wasn't the one the report read.
Builders already think in buckets — the kit, the crew, the subs, the permit fees. Matching the way they think means the budget actually gets filled in, and a budget that exists is the only kind that can warn anyone.
Approved changes add their cost — not just their price
Try itOn a change order, each line can carry your cost per unit and its own markup: new lines start at the job's markup, change either and the price follows, type a price and the markup it implies is worked out. When the change is approved, its cost lands on the budget. A line with no cost entered is estimated as the price less the change order's markup — and the card says how many lines that is.
A $6,850 porch extension raises the contract and nobody records what it cost, so the margin quietly assumes the porch was free.
Every change order makes the job bigger; not every one makes it more profitable. Carrying the cost on the line shows the owner which extras actually earn — so he can price the next one with confidence instead of a guess.
Projected margin, the allowances, and one markup for changes
The bottom of the card is the answer: projected margin, in dollars and as a share of the revised contract. Under it sit the allowances — what's in the contract, what's been chosen, how far over — and the markup on changes and selections, the starting markup for every new change line and allowance option on the job. Costs include what people are paid, so this side shows only to admins, sales managers and project managers.
Asked how a job is doing, the owner says "fine, I think", because nobody has added it up.
One number an owner can say out loud — "that job's at eighteen-seven" — is worth more than a page of columns. It gives him control while there's still time to act, and gives the team a target they understand.
Estimate against actual while the job is still open
The quoted price and the estimated material and labour come off the estimate. The actuals come off approved time, approved receipts and supplier orders for that job. The margin is worked out from both. You find out the framing is running hot in week two — not from your accountant in March, when the only thing left to do is remember it next time.
The framing labour ran 20% over, and the first anyone heard of it was the year-end accounts.
Crews and foremen can fix what they can see. Showing labour against the estimate while the job runs turns a post-mortem into a Tuesday conversation — and the next estimate gets better because of it.
Each crew is priced the way that crew is actually paid
Per-unit crews price units times rate. Hourly and cost-plus crews price hours times rate. A lump-sum crew contributes its agreed lump once — not once per timesheet row. Multiplying a fixed bid by the number of entries somebody submitted is how a job cost report quietly becomes fiction.
A lump-sum crew that filed eight timesheets shows up as eight times its bid.
Builders pay crews four different ways, and a report that prices them all as hourly is wrong for most of them. Pricing each crew the way it's really paid is what makes the owner believe the number — and stop keeping a second spreadsheet.
Only approved hours and receipts reach the actuals
Everything the crews and subs submit waits in one approvals screen, with a pending count in the nav so you know what is outstanding. Approving or rejecting moves the same records the job's costs read. Nothing a crew types can move your job cost until a manager has looked at it.
A typo of 80 hours instead of 8 makes a healthy job look like a disaster until somebody finds it.
A number anyone can change is a number nobody trusts. Letting only approved entries move the job's cost gives the office one gate to watch, and gives the owner a figure he can stand behind.
Spend carries a job, a stage, a category and a receipt
Amount, category, vendor, company card or reimbursable, and a photo of the receipt — filed against the job and the stage it was incurred on. Receipts in a glovebox and a card statement in a different system are not a cost code, and reconstructing one from the other in January is not job costing.
Receipts pile up in a glovebox and the card statement lands in a different system; matching them in January is guesswork.
A receipt filed against the right job the day it's spent is never lost. Filing it from the truck, with a photo, saves the office an evening a month — and every dollar shows up where it belongs.
- 1The money coming in is the signed contract plus approved change orders, with what's been invoiced, collected and funded by a lender.
- 2Budgets are set per phase in four buckets — materials, labour, subs and other.
- 3Committed is what sent purchase orders have promised suppliers and subs.
- 4Actual is materials delivered or paid for, labour priced the way each person is actually paid, and approved expenses.
- 5Projected is the larger of the budget and what's already committed or spent; the margin is the revised contract less the projected cost.
- 6Approved changes add their cost, not just their price — the cost entered on the line, or an estimate when there isn't one.
- 7Only approved hours and receipts count toward actuals.
Builders find out whether a job made money once the job is over — from an accountant, months later — which is far too late to do anything about the one running now. The money a builder loses on a post-frame job usually goes in one or two phases: steel labour that ran long, a concrete sub who billed extra, an upgrade quoted without markup. Every one of those is visible weeks earlier if the budget and the spending sit side by side. So every job carries a budget per phase and reads its spending as it happens: a purchase order counts the day it's sent, not the day the bill arrives; labour counts at what each person is actually paid; an approved change counts at its cost, not its price. Only approved entries count, and a fixed-bid crew is counted once at their bid rather than multiplied by however many entries they happened to file. What's left is one number an owner can trust — projected margin — while there's still time to act on it.
- Job margin only knowable in hindsight from accounting.
- Actual labour cost not derivable from time data.
- Fixed-bid crews double-counted per time entry.
- Overruns found when the bill arrives instead of when the order goes out.
- Change orders that raise the price without anyone tracking what they cost.
