Contractor expense tracking

The job-cost vs overhead distinction

Job costs are the materials, labor, and subcontractor work tied to a specific customer's project — they should be billed back to that job. Overhead, or "soft costs," are what it costs to run the business regardless of which job is on. A contractor who lumps overhead onto a job overstates that job's cost (and over-bills the customer on cost-plus work); one who lumps job costs into overhead understates costs and inflates apparent profit.

Getting this right matters most on cost-plus billing, where the customer's invoice is built directly off the job cost. See construction job profitability.

How JobCostIT separates the two

When you scan a receipt or log a cost, JobCostIT asks one question: which job, or overhead? From there the numbers go to the right place:

• Job receipts file to a specific job's cost ledger — see receipt tracking.
• Fuel & overhead file as company expenses, with fuel captured per-gallon so you can track cost-per-gallon over time.
• Soft costs stay out of customer-facing job reports and invoices, but stay in the company financials where they belong.

The financials view then splits job costs from company expenses so your profitability numbers — and tax time — rest on clean categories.

No more guessing at the end of the month

Because every expense is categorized at the moment it's scanned, there's no monthly ritual of sorting receipts into "which job was this for?" The expense tracking is a side effect of capture, not a separate chore. That's a big part of the case in JobCostIT vs spreadsheets & manual tracking.