How to tell a job is running over on hours before it's finished

Why the end-of-month report is too late

Most landscaping companies find out a job ran over when it's invoiced, or when the job-costing report comes out at month's end. By then the hours are paid, the crew has moved on, and the next similar job has already been priced the same way. Labor is usually the biggest cost on an install, so it's the number worth watching while the job is still running.

1. Give every job an hours budget

The budget should come from the estimate, not from a guess on the first morning. If your estimate prices 300 square feet of pavers, it should also know how many labor hours 300 square feet takes. Keep labor hours per unit in your price list (for example, hours per 100 square feet of base prep) and the budget falls out of every estimate automatically.

On jobs longer than two or three days, split the budget by phase: demolition, base, install, cleanup. Then you can check each phase as it finishes instead of waiting for the whole job.

2. Count hours every day, including unapproved time

The count has to include every hour on the job today: approved time, time the office hasn't approved yet, and anyone still on the clock. If you wait for Friday's timesheet approval, a Tuesday overrun hides for three days. Crew time clocked on a phone against the job makes this possible without anyone adding up paper.

3. Compare hours used with work done

Hours alone don't tell you much. 20 hours into a 30-hour job is fine if the job is two-thirds done, and a problem if it's a third done. So at the end of each day, ask the crew lead one question: roughly how much of the job is done? Courses laid, yards of mulch spread or plants in the ground make it easy to answer in round numbers.

Then work out the projection:

Projected hours = hours so far ÷ share of work done

If the projection is more than about 10% over budget, act now. The exact trigger is yours to choose; what matters is checking at the same point on every job.

A worked example: a 30-hour retaining wall

A three-person crew is building a retaining wall along a driveway. The estimate allows 30 labor hours over two days, with a third day held for cleanup.

The overrun was visible on the evening of day 1: 58% of the hours gone for 45% of the work, projecting about 39 hours against 30. That was the moment to act. The base excavation had hit more rock than the estimate allowed for. With two days left, the owner could have called the customer about the extra digging, moved a fourth person on for a half day to keep the schedule, or at least written down the real hours per foot for the next wall estimate.

Found at the end of the month, the same job is just an overrun of 10 hours or more, with nothing left to do about it.

4. Decide what to do when a job goes over

• The scope grew. The customer added a step, a drain or a bigger patio. Write a change order and add the hours to the budget, so the job isn't counted as over for work that was never priced.
• The site was harder than expected. Rock, access, wet ground. Talk to the customer if your contract allows for it, and add a site-conditions line to future estimates.
• The crew is slower on this kind of work. Pair them with a stronger lead, or adjust which crew gets which jobs.
• The estimate was wrong. Fix the labor hours in your price list or kit, so every estimate after this one is priced on what the work really takes.

Common reasons installs run over on hours

• Base preparation and excavation priced from a clean site, not the real one
• Loading, material runs and dump trips that nobody budgeted
• Rework after a layout change the customer asked for on site
• A job priced from memory instead of from hours recorded on past jobs

How Level Yard does it

In Level Yard the approved estimate becomes the job's hours budget. Every hour clocked on the crew phones counts against it the same day, including time not yet approved and anyone on the clock now. A job that goes over turns red, and the owner gets one email the first time it happens. The job profit report then shows every job's budget against its actuals. See job costing in Level Yard.