Job costing for landscapers
Know a job is running over while you can fix it
Most owners learn a job ran over when it's finished, or at the end of the month. In Level Yard every hour the crew clocks counts against the job's budget the same day, and you get an email the day it goes over.
Retaining wall along the driveway
- Budgeted
- 30 h
- Clocked so far
- 39.7 h
- Over
- 9.7 h
Flagged Tuesday afternoon. One more day is still on the schedule.
- Same day hours count as they're clocked
- One email the day a job goes over
- Budget straight from the estimate
- Profit by job and by division
While the job is running
Hours so far means every hour, today.
When an estimate is approved, its labor hours become the job's budget. From then on, "hours so far" counts everything the crew has clocked on that job: approved time, time the office hasn't approved yet, and anyone on the clock right now.
That last part matters. If the count waited for timesheets to be approved, an overrun could hide for days. Counting open time means a job turns red in Level Yard while the crew is still on site, with the days still on the schedule shown beside it.
The owner gets one email per job, the first time it goes over. Then there's still time to pull a person off, talk to the crew lead or call the customer about a change order.
Once it's done
Which jobs made money, and which didn't.
The job profit report puts every job side by side: revenue, the budget against what really happened, and profit.
Labor
ActualApproved crew hours at your labor rate, against the hours the estimate allowed.
Materials
ActualWhat you log against the job. A finished job with no materials logged counts them at budget and is flagged, so it can't show a profit it never made.
Equipment and subs
At budgetCounted at what the estimate allowed. The report says so, so nobody reads them as actuals.
Profit and margin
Per jobRevenue minus cost, with the margin you planned beside the one you got, and your goal for that division.
Totals
By stageFinished, started and not started are totalled apart, so work nobody has started can't make the month look better than it is. Filter by dates and division.
Why it pays
The next estimate gets better too.
A job that ran 30% over on hours usually wasn't bad luck. The base prep took longer than the price book says, or one crew is slower on walls than another. When every job's hours sit beside its budget, the pattern shows after a few weeks, not at the end of the season.
Fix the labor hours in the price book or the kit, and every estimate after that is priced on what the work really takes. We wrote up how to catch an overrun early, with a worked example: how to tell a job is running over on hours before it's finished.
Questions
What owners ask about job costing.
Where does the job's budget come from?
From the approved estimate. Each price-book item carries its labor hours per unit, so the estimate already knows how many hours the job should take.
Do hours count before I approve the timesheet?
For the running total, yes: approved time, time waiting for approval and anyone on the clock now all count, so an overrun shows the same day. The profit report uses approved hours.
Who gets told when a job goes over?
The owner gets one email per job, the first time its hours pass the budget. The job also moves to the top of the list in red.
How do crews clock in?
On their phone, against the job they're at, in English or Spanish. It keeps working with no signal and sends the time when the signal comes back.
Does it track materials and equipment?
Materials logged against a job count as actual cost. Equipment and subcontractors are counted at the estimate's budget, and the report labels them that way.
Can I see profit by division?
Yes. Filter the job profit report by division and dates, and compare each job's margin with that division's goal.
Early access
See your next job's hours as they happen.
We're setting up a limited number of Pennsylvania landscaping companies before the season starts. Bring a job or two you'd like to watch closely.
- Free during early access
- Crew phones clock in against the job
- Set up with your own prices and labor rate