3 Simple Ways to Ensure Your Job Costing Won’t Cost You!

Chances are you already know there’s more to job costing than just pulling together some numbers you think you can live with.

In fact, job costing done properly starts long before you provide project numbers to your client, and doesn’t end until the books are finally closed.  We all have many day to day responsibilities so here are 3 simple ways to ensure job costing won’t cost you!

  1. Begin and End with the Budget  Your budget will be updated and revised along the way and will actually evolve into a living document.
  2. Honor the Code(ing)  Nothing throws a budget off track faster than incorrect coding. Every dollar spent should be assigned and properly allocated.  This can be complicated when portions of time or materials are assigned to different projects but it is critical for an organized budget.
  3. Change (Order) Can Be Good  The only constant in life is change.  Accept it and deal properly with it.
a)  Monitor expenses to determine the effect of the change.
b)  Make sure your clients/customers/team understand the project scope and mutual accountability
c)  Track and measure profitability

If you’re already consistently adhering to these suggestions, and you still have plenty of time to handle project and day-to-day business obligations, we congratulate you.  However, if these details are consuming too much of your time, or if you’re avoiding them completely, please download this Job Costing Worksheet.

The difference between an effective job costing system and an inadequate one, or no job costing system at all, is similar to the difference between data and information.  Data consists of raw facts or numbers, while information is data organized so you can act on it.