Job costing
Job Costing That Catches the Overrun Mid-Build, Not in March
Every job carries the price your customer agreed to, the labour and materials you estimated, and what crews, receipts and supplier orders have cost so far. A stage running over shows up while there are stages left to fix it.
What job costing software has to answer on a pole barn
Job costing software answers one question per job: what did this building cost us to put up, against what we sold it for? On a post-frame job that question has three piles of cost behind it, each arriving from a different place at a different time.
- Labour. Your own crew’s hours, a steel crew paid by the sheet, a concrete sub on a fixed bid for the slab.
- Materials. Posts and trusses in week one, steel and trim in week three, overhead doors at the end, often from more than one yard.
- Job expenses. Fuel, the lift rental, the dumpster, the permit fee.
Plenty of builders add those piles up once the job is closed, or in March, when the accountant closes out the year. By then the number can only make you feel better or worse about the next quote. Job costing earns its keep when you see it on a 40x60 shop with a 12′ lean-to while the trusses are still going up, with the siding and trim stages still left to run tighter.
Where a job's real cost goes missing
None of this is carelessness. It is what happens when the numbers for one building live in five places.
Hours written up on Friday
The crew lead rebuilds the week from memory, and nobody can say which stage the hours went to.
Receipts in the truck
Fuel, a lift rental and a hardware-store run show up on a card statement weeks later, with no job attached.
Material orders spread over six weeks
Each order looks fine on its own. Nobody adds them up against the estimate until the last delivery.
Crews paid three different ways
Per sheet for steel, a fixed bid for concrete, hourly for your own crew. Multiply a fixed bid by every timesheet row and a spreadsheet invents a loss.
The margin arrives after the job
You learn the framing ran two days over when the next three buildings are already quoted the same way.
How the margin on each job is worked out
The Project P&L at the top of this page is built from four inputs, each traceable to where it came from.
The baseline is the estimate they signed
The quoted price and estimated labour and materials come off the estimate the customer agreed to. Estimate in SmartBuild? The job finds its synced SmartBuild estimate by job number.
Labour is priced the way each crew is paid
Approved hours times rate for an hourly crew. Units times rate for a crew paid by the sheet. A fixed-bid sub counts its agreed amount once, not once per timesheet.
Expenses are the receipts you approved
Each carries the job, the stage, a category such as fuel, rental or permits, the vendor and a photo of the receipt.
Materials are the orders raised for that job
Supplier orders written against the project add up as actual material cost, beside the estimate’s material figure.
The margin is what is left
Revenue less actual cost, in dollars and as a percentage, with labour and expenses broken down stage by stage underneath, so you can see which stage ate it.
Nothing a crew types moves your numbers until you approve it
Your crews clock in and out on their texted field link, and subcontractors report hours, units and receipts from their own. All of it lands in one Approvals screen, grouped by job, with a pending count in the navigation.
Approve an entry and it prices straight into that job’s costs. Reject it and it never touches them. That one step makes the margin at the top of the job a number you act on rather than argue about.
Materials against a budget, phase by phase
Material is often the largest cost on a post-frame job, and it arrives as orders spread over weeks. Purchase order lines carry the phase they belong to, so spend groups under Concrete, Post Set or Siding / Roofing rather than under whichever yard sent the invoice.
Type a budget beside a phase and the bar shows where you stand: amber near the limit, red once it is over, with the amount over or left beside it. You find out the slab ran over before the steel is ordered.
Where the actual costs come from
Job costing is only as good as its inputs. These are the parts of Leads2Build that write them, and the one that reads them all.
Job profit, estimate against actual
Quoted price and estimated costs against actual labour, approved receipts and material orders, worked out while the job is open.
See how it worksJobsite punch clock
One tap in, one tap out. Hours are two timestamps against a job and a stage, not a Friday guess.
See how it worksSubcontractor portal
One link per sub, showing only their stages. They report hours or units and expenses with receipts, no login.
See how it worksMaterial orders from the takeoff
The takeoff becomes an order sheet a yard can quote. Sending it writes the purchase order, so there is no second entry.
See how it worksLabour calculator
Its crew-hours mode prices labour from crew size, wage, burden and square feet a crew-day, so the labour you sell is what a crew really costs.
See how it worksQuickBooks Online
Invoices, customers and jobs land in your books, and a payment your bookkeeper records there marks the invoice paid here. Nobody re-types the job.
See how it worksWhere accounting-side job costing fits, and where this fits
Accounting and payroll tools do real job costing too, and for some builders they are the right home for it. The difference is mostly where the numbers start.
| What matters | Leads2Build | Accounting-first job costing |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Post-frame, pole barn and barndominium builders running sales, estimating, the build and billing in one system. | Foundation: construction accounting with payroll and a general ledger. Miter: contractor payroll, compliance and labour costing. QuickBooks Online: accounting with project profitability. |
| The budget each job is measured against | The estimate the customer agreed to becomes the baseline, with no budget typed in a second time. | QuickBooks Online Advanced runs an estimates-versus-actuals report. Foundation breaks budgets into custom cost codes or CSI divisions. |
| How hours arrive | Punches on the crew’s field link, or hours and units from a sub’s link, against a job and a stage, then approved. | QuickBooks Time logs hours against projects and updates their labour cost. Miter offers eight-plus ways to clock in, including a mobile app and a kiosk. |
| Burdened labour and payroll | Crew-hours estimates load the wage with your burden. Actuals are approved hours or units at each crew’s rate; payroll taxes are not run here. | Miter allocates payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits to the job, phase and cost code. Foundation validates labour before payroll runs and feeds it into job costs. |
| Materials and expenses | Supplier orders from the takeoff, and approved receipts with a photo, land on the job and the stage. | In QuickBooks, each bill, check or expense line is assigned to the customer or project. |
| Accounting reports | Invoices, customers and jobs go to QuickBooks Online; payments recorded there come back. The ledger stays there. | Foundation includes WIP, over/under billing, cash flow and overhead allocation reports. |
Competitor details as of September 2026, from each vendor’s job costing page. The two run side by side: job costs captured here, the books kept in QuickBooks.
Keep reading
See a post-frame job costed
from the signed estimate
Book a demo and we will walk a job from the estimate your customer signed, through approved hours, receipts and supplier orders, to the margin at the top.
Leads2BuildBUILDER OPERATING SYSTEM
Leads2BuildBUILDER OPERATING SYSTEMQuestions builders ask
How do I calculate job costing?
Add up what the job has consumed so far (labour, materials, and job expenses such as fuel, rentals and permit fees) and subtract it from the contract price. That is the margin; divide by the price for the percentage. Say a 40x60 shop with a 12′ lean-to sold for $86,400 has used $38,220 of labour, $21,480 of materials and $6,145 of expenses: the margin is $20,555, or 24%. Then do it per stage, so an overrun points at the stage that caused it.
Can QuickBooks do job costing for a construction company?
Yes. As of September 2026, Intuit includes job costing in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced once Projects is turned on, and it depends on every bill, check and expense line being assigned to the right project. Leads2Build complements it: costs are captured on the job from the field, invoices, customers and jobs go to QuickBooks Online, and payments recorded there come back.
What is the difference between estimating and job costing?
An estimate is what you expect the building to cost before you sell it. Job costing is what it actually cost once crews, orders and receipts come in. Each is half useful without the other, which is why Leads2Build takes the baseline from the estimate the customer agreed to rather than a budget typed in again.
How should I job cost a sub paid per sheet or on a fixed bid?
Price each crew the way you pay it. A steel crew paid by the sheet costs units times rate; an hourly crew costs approved hours times rate. A fixed-bid concrete sub costs its agreed amount once, however many days it logs. Multiply that bid by every timesheet entry and the job cost report stops matching reality.
Does job costing software replace my accountant or payroll?
Not this one. Leads2Build tracks what each job costs, works out crew payouts, and sends invoices, customers and jobs to QuickBooks Online. Payroll taxes, the general ledger and year-end reporting stay with your bookkeeper. If you need burdened payroll costing or WIP schedules, a construction accounting or payroll tool is built for that, and the two can run side by side.
30 minutes with Keith · exclusively post-frame & barndominium
Bring one real job.
We’ll walk it lead to paid.
Keith Lemay, the founder, takes this call himself. You show how a job moves through your business today — the call, the quote, the contract, the build, the money. He shows you the same job in Leads2Build. We work exclusively with post-frame and barndominium builders, so none of it is generic.
- Pick a time — it goes straight onto Keith’s calendar.
- The confirmation comes by email, with a link to move it if you need to.
- Bring a job you’ve quoted lately. That’s the one worth walking through.
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The confirmation comes by email.