How job costing works
A job costs itself from the hours logged against it and the receipts assigned to it.
Where the numbers come from
SiteLedger never asks you to type a cost twice. A job builds its own cost out of two things: the timesheets logged against that job, and the receipts assigned to that job. Log the hours, capture the receipts, and the costing takes care of itself.
- Labor cost: the hours on each timesheet multiplied by the hourly rate on that entry
- Material cost: the full amount of every receipt assigned to the job
- Spent to date: labor plus materials, nothing else
A receipt with no job on it is not counted against any job. Those receipts show a "Needs a job" pill, and the Receipts page has a "Needs job" filter so you can find them.
Give the job a contract value
Costs add up on their own, but margin needs something to measure against. That figure is the contract value: what the customer is paying you for the job. Without it SiteLedger still totals your spend, but it has nothing to compare that spend to.
- Click Jobs in the sidebar, then click New job.
- Fill in the job name and the customer.
- Under Budget & schedule, enter the contract value.
- Click Create job.
On a job that already exists, click the job, click Edit job, change the contract value under Budget & schedule, then click Save changes. Change orders belong here too. Raise the contract value when the customer signs for more work, and the margin follows.
Where to see it
- Click Jobs in the sidebar.
- Click the job you want.
- Read the four figures across the top: Contract value, Spent to date, Projected margin, Hours logged.
- Budget used: a bar showing spend against contract value, with the labor and materials totals underneath
- Costs tab: the same two totals as bars, each with its share of the spend
- Time tab: every shift on the job with hours and cost per entry
- Receipts tab: every receipt on the job with vendor, category, and amount
The maths, with real numbers
Take a $40,000 bathroom job. Your crew has logged hours worth $14,000 at their rates, and $8,000 of receipts are assigned to the job. Spent to date is $22,000. Projected profit is the contract value minus that spend, so $18,000.
Margin is that profit as a share of the contract value: contract value minus spend, divided by contract value. Here that is $18,000 divided by $40,000, or 45 percent. The number updates the moment another timesheet or receipt lands.
Hours count toward the job cost as soon as they are logged, not only once you approve them. Where an entry has an approved hours figure, SiteLedger uses that instead of what was originally submitted.