Job costing template

Short answer

A job costing template compares estimated against actual cost for every category on a job: materials, labor, subcontractors, equipment and overhead allocation. The critical columns are variance in dollars and variance as a percentage, because the pattern in those columns across many jobs is what tells you which parts of your estimating are consistently wrong.

Job costing is not bookkeeping, it is feedback for your estimating. This template puts estimated next to actual for every cost category and surfaces the variance that should change your next bid. Free PDF and spreadsheet.

What is in the template

Job header

  • Job name, number and client
  • Contract sum and approved change orders
  • Start date and completion date
  • Job type (for comparing like with like later)

Cost categories (estimated vs actual)

  • Materials
  • Labor, at fully burdened cost
  • Subcontractors
  • Equipment and rentals
  • Permits and fees
  • Disposal and site costs
  • Overhead allocation

Variance analysis

  • Variance in dollars per category
  • Variance as a percentage
  • Cause of the largest variances
  • Whether it was a pricing error, a scope error or an execution issue

Profit summary

  • Total revenue including change orders
  • Total actual cost
  • Gross profit and gross margin
  • Net profit after overhead and net margin
  • Profit per labor hour

Lessons for the next bid

  • What to price differently
  • What to exclude explicitly
  • Which supplier or sub caused issues
  • Whether this job type is worth repeating

Spreadsheet columns

How to use it

  1. Cost jobs while they run, not at the end, so you can still correct course.
  2. Always use fully burdened labor cost, never raw wages.
  3. Categorise the cause of each big variance, since the cause is the lesson.
  4. Group jobs by type and compare, one job's variance is noise, ten jobs' variance is a pattern.
  5. Feed the corrections back into your price book, otherwise the exercise is just record keeping.

Frequently asked questions

What is job costing in construction?

Tracking all actual costs against a specific job and comparing them to the estimate, so you know the true profit on that job and can see where your estimating was inaccurate.

How often should I job cost?

Update costs weekly during the job and complete a full analysis at closeout. Weekly updates let you catch an overrun while you can still do something about it; the closeout review is what improves future bids.

What variance is acceptable?

Small variances are normal on any job. The signal to watch is consistency: if labor runs over on most jobs of one type, that is a pricing correction rather than bad luck, and it should change your unit rates.

Summary

A free job costing template from WinkScope in PDF and CSV, no signup. It compares estimated versus actual cost across materials, burdened labor, subcontractors, equipment, permits, disposal and overhead allocation, with dollar and percentage variance columns, cause analysis, gross and net profit, profit per labor hour, and a section for corrections to apply to the next bid.