Job Costing for Contractors

A project can stay busy, look healthy, and still give away thousands of dollars of the profit you expected to make.

You estimated the labor. You priced the materials. You reviewed the subcontractor quotes. The job was sold.

But once construction begins, the real question is different:

What is this job actually costing you, where is it financially heading, and what will it really make?

Job Costing for Contractors is a practical guide for owner-operators, general contractors, remodelers, builders, specialty contractors, and small-to-midsize construction businesses that want better control of project costs and profit without turning job costing into an accounting exercise.

Using a realistic contractor case that develops from estimate through closeout, Reid Coleman shows you how to connect what you expected a job to cost with what production is actually consuming.

You will learn how to:

• Turn an estimate into a job-cost budget that remains useful during production
• Separate the original budget, revised budget, and live forecast
• Track labor hours and loaded labor cost instead of watching payroll dollars alone
• Understand whether material differences come from price, quantity, waste, returns, or rework
• Keep subcontractor commitments visible before the final invoices arrive
• Build a realistic cost-to-complete forecast and projected final job cost
• Compare expected gross profit and margin with where the project is actually heading
• Separate estimating problems from production problems, changed scope, and project-specific risk
• Close the job financially and feed completed-project evidence back into future estimates