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# Job Costing

---
Title: Job Costing
Keywords: job costing, job cost, net profit, profit, overhead, before overhead, daily pmm, running long, at this pace, over budget, in progress, finished, labor cost, pay rate, materials, orders, billing, before tax, on the clock, needs attention, hours not clocked, missing pay rate
---
## Job Costing
Most contractors find out a job lost money weeks after it's done, when the crew has moved on and the money is gone. Job Costing shows you while the job is still running, when a phone call can still save it. It puts the time clock, the orders you record, the contract, your invoices and your Profit Genie overhead together on one page, and keeps the final numbers once the job is finished.

This is more than another report, it's the scoreboard for every job you're running. It's built to be looked at while the work is still happening, not filed away at the end of the season.

To open it, click **Reporting** in the menu, then **Job Costing**. You'll also find it as a tab at the top of the Command Center.

Let's take it one section at a time.

![Figure 1: Job Costing, In progress. The navy card adds up every job in progress, the job most at risk is at the top, and the dark tick on each bar is where the schedule says the job should be.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_In_Progress.png =1242x814)

# Who Sees What
| **Job Costing** | **Owner/Admin** | **Manager** | **Estimator** | **Sales** | **Accounting** | **Foreman/PM** | **Field** |
| ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| Job Costing page and tab | ✅ | ✅ |  |  |  |  |  |

Labor cost shows what you pay each person, so Job Costing is for owners and managers only. If you're one and don't see it, it isn't turned on for your company yet.

# Net Profit Is the Number That Pays You
Every profit number here is **net profit**: what a job leaves after it pays its own labor, materials, equipment and subs, and its share of running your business. A paver patio can look like a great job before overhead and still lose money once it pays its share of the trucks, the insurance and the office. That's the job that sinks a season, and it's the one this page is built to catch.

Profit **before overhead** is still there, in smaller type next to the net. It's the number the Command Center's Gross Profit uses, so you can tie the two together.

Every figure on the navy card has a **?** next to it. Hover over it, or tap it on a phone, and it tells you exactly what the figure means and where it comes from.

![Figure 2: Tap or hover over any ? to see what a figure means.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_Popup.png =1242x228)

# In Progress
The page opens on every job in progress: accepted, not completed or cancelled, with hours or orders on it.

**The navy card** adds up all of those jobs:
* **Projected net profit:** what these jobs leave if the rest of each one goes to budget. A cost still under budget counts at its budget; a cost already over counts at what's been spent. The number only drops once something is actually over.
* **Budgeted:** the net profit the jobs were priced to make.
* **At this pace:** the net profit if each job keeps using hours the way it has so far.
* **Overhead:** your Profit Genie overhead on these jobs.
* **Before overhead:** projected profit before overhead. Take the overhead off and you get the net.
* **On the clock now:** who's clocked in on these jobs right now.

**Each row** shows the client, project and crew, and where the job is on its schedule, like **Day 4 of 6**. Then the hours used against budget (the dark tick is where the schedule says the job should be), what's been spent so far, and the projected net profit with how far it is from the budgeted net.

| **Pill** | **What it means** |
| ---- | ---- |
| Running long | The job is using its hours faster than its schedule |
| Over budget | Labor, materials, or equipment and subs have already gone over |
| Missing pay rate | Someone clocked hours on the job with no pay rate set |
| On track | None of the above |
| 2 on the clock | People clocked in on the job right now |

A row that needs a look gets a line under it saying why, like "Materials are $176 over" or "Dan Ruiz clocked 7.5 hours with no pay rate."

The jobs most at risk sit at the top. Check **Needs attention** to see only the jobs that are over budget, running long or missing a pay rate, or pick a crew to see only that crew's jobs.

| 💡 Pro Tip: Open Job Costing every Monday morning and check **Needs attention**. Every job on that list is a conversation with a foreman, and that conversation is a lot cheaper on day 3 than after the last day.

# Running Long and At This Pace
**Day X of Y** counts the days the job is scheduled up to today, out of all its scheduled days. It's the same **Days on Job** you see on the Project Budget page.

A job is **running long** when the share of hours used is ahead of the share of days. On day 4 of 6, a two-man crew should have used about two thirds of the hours. If they've used 78%, the job is running long.

**At this pace** stretches the hours used so far over the whole schedule. On day 4 of 6 with 48 hours used, the job is on track to take about 72 hours, and every extra hour adds labor and overhead. A job with no schedule has no pace, which is one more reason to schedule every job.

|| ℹ️ **Running long isn't a verdict**: it's an early warning. Sometimes a crew front-loads the hard part, like the excavation on a patio, and catches up later. Sometimes the job was underbid. Find out which it is while there's still time to do something about it.

# Finished
Click **Finished** for the final numbers on your completed jobs, newest first. Pick a season and a crew. The season is the year a job was scheduled, or created if that's later, the same as the Command Center.

![Figure 3: Finished. The card counts only jobs whose labor is all there; the jobs it leaves out stay in the list in gray, with the reason.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_Finished.png =1242x924)

**The navy card** shows the season's **net profit** and its share of your contracts, plus **Gross profit**, **Overhead**, **Daily PMM** against your target with how many jobs met it, and **Hours** over or under budget.

**Each row** shows the final cost with overhead, the **net profit** with its margin and the budgeted net, and the job's Daily PMM against your target. The pills show **Met PMM target** or **Under PMM target**, **Hours over**, and whether the job is **Paid in full**, still has money **owed**, or isn't fully invoiced.

**Which jobs count.** A finished job only counts in the totals when its labor is all there: at least half the budgeted hours clocked, and a pay rate for everyone who clocked in. That's the same rule as the Command Center's Gross Profit, so the two always match. The rest stay in the list, in gray, so they can't make your season look better than it was:
* **Hours not clocked:** under half the budgeted hours were clocked, so labor is missing and the profit reads high.
* **Missing pay rate:** someone on the job has no pay rate, so part of the labor is missing.

The card tells you how many jobs it left out and why.

**Materials not recorded.** Materials nobody recorded count as $0, the same as on the Command Center. When that happens on a job in the totals, the card says how much of the materials budget was actually recorded. A finished job with materials budgeted and none recorded gets a **No materials recorded** pill.

|| ⚠️ **Important**: If more of your finished jobs are left out than counted, the problem isn't your jobs. It's your clocking and your ordering. Get those right and this page becomes the most honest number in your business.

# One Job
Click any row to open that job.

![Figure 4: One job. The top shows where the job is headed; the warnings say what's wrong; the cost table adds up to the cent.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_Job_Top.png =1242x931)

**The navy card** shows the client, project, crew and crew size, Day X of Y and who's on the clock. The big number is the projected net profit, or the final net profit once the job is finished. Under it you'll find **Budgeted**, **At this pace**, **Overhead**, **Before overhead** with its margin, and the **Contract, before tax** with accepted change orders included.

Anything that's gone wrong shows right under the card: running long, a cost that's over (and which materials did it), or someone missing a pay rate.

**The cost table** has a row each for **Labor**, **Materials**, and **Equipment & subs**, with spent so far, budget and what's left. Then **Job cost** before overhead, **Overhead**, **Total with overhead**, and the net profit at the bottom. This page shows cents, so every row adds up.

![Figure 5: Daily PMM for the crew size, and billing before tax.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_Job_PMM_Billing.png =1242x316)

**Daily PMM** for the job's crew size: what the job was priced at per crew day, the pace it's on now, and your Profit Genie target for that size of crew. A finished job shows what it actually earned per crew day.

**Billing, before tax:** the contract, what's been invoiced and paid, what's been spent, and what's still to invoice, with a line saying whether payments are ahead of or behind what you've spent. If you're behind, you're financing your client's job.

![Figure 6: Labor by person, and materials line by line with the overruns first.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Reporting/Images/Job_Costing_Job_Labor_Materials.png =1242x657)

**Labor by person:** hours, overtime and cost for each person, at their pay rate with taxes and burden as of each clock-in.

**Materials, line by line:** budget and bought for each material, quantity and cost, with the difference. The materials that went over come first.

Click **Job Costing** at the top to go back to the list.

# Daily PMM
Daily PMM is how much each person produces in a day. Job Costing works it out exactly the way the Command Center does, so the Finished card's Daily PMM matches the Command Center's YTD Daily PMM.
* **Production** is the contract less the materials, equipment and subs recorded. If nothing was recorded, the materials budget is used instead, so a job doesn't look like its materials were free.
* **Man-days** are the hours clocked divided by your Profit Genie hours per day.
* **Your target** is your Profit Genie Daily PMM divided by your field employees, times the crew size.

A job can come in right on budget and still not make you money if it was priced under your target. Daily PMM is how you catch that.

# Where the Numbers Come From
* **Labor:** hours from the time clock with unpaid breaks taken off, at each person's pay rate with taxes and burden as of when they clocked in, plus overtime. Warranty time logged on a customer's job counts as that job's labor. Shop Time, Older Work and the shift clock don't count on any job.
* **Clocks running now** count up to the minute. A clock left running from an earlier day waits until clock-out.
* **People with no pay rate:** their hours show and carry overhead, but their labor is left out and they're named so you can fix it. Set the rate in **Employees**.

|| ⚠️ **Important**: Set a pay rate for every person before they clock their first hour. Hours without a rate still carry overhead, but their labor is left out, so the job looks cheaper than it really is.

* **Materials:** the orders recorded on the Project Budget page, at the price paid.
* **Equipment and subs:** the budget comes from the proposal, before markup. Equipment on a proposal, like the skid steer you charge by the day, is a job cost; only the equipment in your Profit Genie overhead, like your trucks and small tools, is overhead. Until equipment and subs can be recorded on the Project Budget page, spent shows **None recorded** and the projection uses the budget.
* **Overhead:** your Profit Genie overhead and expenses divided by your field hours for the season, as a rate per hour. Every hour clocked on a job carries it; the budget is the budgeted hours at the same rate. If your Profit Genie is locked, the locked numbers are used. If Profit Genie has no overhead yet, Overhead reads **Not set** and the net is the same as profit before overhead.
* **Billing:** sent, partly paid and paid invoices, with the sales tax taken off so it compares to cost.
* **Contract:** the price before tax, with accepted change orders.

# Keeping It Current
* Clock-ins, clock-outs and orders show up within about 5 minutes. Invoices and payments show up within seconds.
* The page tells you how long ago it was updated, next to the green dot.

# Getting Numbers You Can Trust
* Have crews clock in to the job, not just the day. Time on the shift clock never reaches a job.
* Set a pay rate for everyone in **Employees** before they clock their first hour.
* Record orders on the Project Budget page when you buy, not at the end of the job.
* Schedule every job, so Running long and At this pace can do their work.
* Mark jobs complete when they're done. A finished job sitting in In progress hides your real season.
* Keep Profit Genie current. Your overhead rate and Daily PMM target both come from it.