Job costing: know which jobs actually make money.

Job costing means assigning every dollar of cost, labor (with burden), materials, subcontractors, equipment and overhead, to the specific job that incurred it, then comparing it to what you billed. Done right, it turns "we did $6M in revenue" into "job 1042 made 31%, job 1050 lost 4%, and here's why."

When costs aren't tracked to jobs in real time, three things happen: mispriced work isn't caught until it's over, scope creep goes unbilled, and one good job silently subsidizes a losing one. You feel busy and stretched, but the margin isn't there. See how this connects to bonding in WIP and bonding capacity.

• A clean cost structure, labor with burden, materials, subs, equipment, other, consistent across jobs.
• Costs captured at the source, from the field software crews already use, not a spreadsheet weeks later.
• A WIP schedule so in-progress jobs show earned revenue, over/under-billings and cost-to-complete.
• Monthly, on time, numbers that land by day 10, while you can still act on them.

• Labor booked without burden, you're understating true cost.
• Costs entered late, so percent complete and margin are always wrong.
• No cost-to-complete updates, profit fade nobody sees coming.
• Field software and accounting not connected, double entry, errors, delay.
• Reviewing job margin only after the job closes, too late to fix anything.

Job costing doesn't fail from lack of discipline, it fails because the data lives in two systems that don't talk. Your field software captures the work; your accounting holds the money; nobody has time to reconcile them weekly. The fix is to connect them so job costs and WIP flow into your books automatically. That's the systems work, see ServiceTitan to QuickBooks and Procore to QuickBooks.

General information for Ontario businesses, current at the time of writing. Not tax, legal or accounting advice. Confirm your situation with a professional. Steel City CFO can help.