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.