Most tradies find out whether a job made money when the bank balance tells them, months later, all mixed in with every other job. By then it's too late to fix the quote, and you'll price the next job the same way. Job costing is just checking each job when it finishes, while you can still learn something from it.
What you need
- The quote, with each part of the job on its own line: walls, ceilings, doors, prep, and so on.
- The crew's hours, logged against those same lines, every day.
- Materials bought for the job, matched to the job.
- Any extras the client asked for, so they don't look like overruns.
The hours are the hard part, and the part that matters most. On most trade jobs labour is the biggest cost by far, so that's where the money is won or lost.
Compare quoted against actual
When the job's done, put the quoted hours next to the real hours for every line. Here's an example for an interior repaint. These are example figures.
The total says the job ran 18 hours over. The lines say why: prep and doors. Ceilings and walls were priced fine. Without the lines you'd raise everything, or nothing.
Then change the rate, not just the mood
One bad job can be bad luck. The same line running over on three or four jobs is a rate that's wrong. Move it. If doors keep taking 1.5 times what you quote, your door rate goes up 50%, or you find out what's slowing the crew down. Either way you stop paying for it out of your own pocket.
Why most tradies don't do it
Because it's a pain on paper. Hours come in on Friday as one number per person, not split by task, so there's nothing to compare. The fix is getting the crew to split their day across the quote's tasks when they sign off. It takes a minute when the tasks are already there to tap. See crew timesheets without chasing anyone.
Do it every job
Job costing pays off over many jobs, not one. Every finished job sharpens your rates a little. After a year you're quoting from your own crew's real speed, not a guess, and that's when quoting gets fast and the margins stop leaking. If your charge-out rate itself might be off, start with how to work out your charge-out rate.
TradieXai does this for you. The crew's hours go against each quote line at sign off, and every finished job shows quoted against actual and tells you which rates to move.