Job costing
Find out which jobs actually make money
Most small crews know what they charged. Fewer know what each job cost. Receipts sorted by job close most of that gap.
Text it like this
Fictional example.
Why receipts by job
Your books show what the business spent. Job costing shows what each job spent, which is what tells you whether your prices are right. Materials are the easiest part to track because every purchase comes with a receipt. Labor and subs can come later.
The habit is simple: one photo per receipt, the same day, with the job name. A receipt that sits in the truck for a month is hard to read and harder to remember.
What a receipt should show
The IRS lists what expense records should show: who was paid, the amount, the date, a description of what was bought, and proof of payment, which can take a second document such as a card statement. Those are also the columns of a useful job cost sheet. The IRS generally asks you to keep records for three years, longer in some situations, so keep the originals even after they are on the sheet.
How CrewBuddy keeps the sheet
Text the receipt photos with the job name. CrewBuddy reads the store, date, items, tax and total, files each one by job, splits a receipt between jobs when you say so, and keeps returns as their own lines. Card numbers stay off the sheet. A receipt it cannot read is flagged rather than guessed.
The sheet is a spreadsheet in your files that opens in Excel or Google Sheets and is easy for a bookkeeper to bring into QuickBooks. Ask "how is the Baker deck doing?" and you get spent against the estimate. Over a season, it shows which kinds of jobs run over, which is the number that changes your next price.
Labor and subs
Materials are only part of the cost. Text the crew hours at the end of each day, “Baker deck, 3 guys, 7 hours”, and any sub invoices, and CrewBuddy adds them to the same job. At the end, one question shows materials, labor and subs against the estimate, which is the number that tells you whether to raise your price for that kind of job.
Keep it rough at first. A job sheet that is 90% complete is far more useful than a perfect one you never start.
Recipes: receipt photos to job costs and job photos to a materials list and estimate.
Sources: IRS: what kind of records should I keep, IRS: how long should I keep records
Start this week
How to see what each job really cost in materials by keeping receipts by job, and how CrewBuddy turns receipt photos into a job cost sheet.
- Photograph every receipt the day you get it.
- Say which job it belongs to.
- Compare the job total with the estimate when the job closes.