How are you doing so far?
A new email comes in. A prospective customer with a big job that needs filling in. They want to know what your best price is so that they can do comparisons and confirm if you’d be best for the job. After performing estimations for the job, getting it done, you notice that you’ve gone off target and gained nothing but losses. If this sounds familiar, then you should request a consultation to learn about job costing methods and which one would work best for your particular business.
With the emergence of digital solutions, job costing doesn’t have to be a manual task anymore. Yes, your spreadsheet might have gotten you this far but with more projects to balance out, it’s quickly becoming laughable to keep up. The worst part is only finding out after the job has a closeout that you’ve been making losses. Not knowing how much you’re making during the job is also frustrating.
If you’ve already discovered and are currently using a job costing software in your business, then this resource will be helpful for you too.
Advantages worthy of mention…
Job costing software gives you a consistent and accurate breakdown of your job costing efforts. This helps to keep you on top of all your projects so that you’re always sure about where you stand at every point in a job. You’ll gain a substantial understanding of where your profits are being gained or potentially lost.
More clearly, job costing software helps you to stay on target next to the set estimation.
No missed deadlines in sight!
Nothing makes you question your professionalism quite like missed deadlines. They are not only a sign of being overwhelmed but also of a lack of balance in your job processes. Job costing software swoops in and ensures that you’re aware of important dates through a calendar that you can view to keep up with other upcoming deadlines.
Job Time Tracker
There are numerous methods you can opt for when job costing. Whichever that you choose to settle for, the hours you work need to be tracked. Whether this will determine how much you earn on a job or help you to ascertain the performance of your team against estimated time, time tracking comes as a neat feature on job costing software.
Job Scheduling
Being able to plan jobs and projects is a feature that comes with job costing software. It comes along with the option of an overview that shows you who is working on what so that you can delegate tasks better plus pushing forward productivity within your team.
Insightful reporting
This feature will no doubt be much appreciated by your administration team. Instead of manually keeping up with jobs and your team activities, you’ll get clever reporting that helps you better understand deadlines, assess job statuses, and figure out team member allocation at just one glance. Say goodbye to boring report assembling.
Easy job setup
If you’ve been avoiding job costing software because it sounds like, you’ll require additional training to use it then you’ve been wrong. Job costing software is created to remove the ‘complexity’ in any Tradies routine. All that’ll be needed to create a new job is the customer name, the name of the job, and the state where the job will be performed.
Stay updated on all your jobs
One of the main reasons you’re probably reading this article. Job costing software allows you to view team allocation, filter the variations of jobs you want to see, look at all the jobs in your business then, of course, see essential milestones and dates from one place.
Let’s quickly look at the top options.
Buildertrend
Buildertrend has managed to ease the lives of homebuilders, remodelers, speciality contractors, and general contractors. We featured this as a recommendation because it’s highly rated and it comes with quirks that are useful for improving profitability and increasing your team’s productivity.
With its pre-sales process, you’ll be able to bid requests, do email marketing, create estimates or proposals at the same time whilst pushing your leads. If you’re already using job management software, you’ve realized that there isn’t much of a need to hire a project manager because the Buildertrend job costing software allows daily logs and to-do lists. You’ll be able to send documents that have photos attached and other interesting aspects. The financial tools that make creating invoices possible along with payment processing exist to better your cash flow. You can also change orders; track time is taken to complete jobs and manage purchase orders. With the intense amount of competition currently, customer management is crucial. Your customers will have a personal login that allows them to leave reviews and communicate any issues they might have. They’ll be able to suggest jobs of interest too!
Already using Buildertrend in your business? To learn how you can utilize it effectively and increase your productivity, contact us to get resources from our latest webinar with our co-founding partner Bryn and Tiffany English from Modus Operandi.
simPRO
simPRO is well-trusted for straightening out construction workflows. Just like with Buildertrend, it’ll be able to cover the gaps in-between the administrative part of a job and project processes. The workflow in simPRO is logical and yet comprehensive. The ability to create a quote then later convert it in order to track a job as an invoice is useful. If the software is set up correctly, simPRO is fairly easy to use. Even for electricians and construction workers, the ease of use is appreciated. You’ll be happy to know that this software collects payments, makes payments and even gives credit memos. The project management aspect of the app helps you to stay in touch with your client without any interruptions.
Service Job Management
Tasks that need to be cleared before heading out to the job are catered for here. This includes the initial job costing, scheduling, quoting, and of course, invoicing. Control your cash flow situation from the tips of your fingertips by accessing all these resources conveniently through your mobile device.
Go paperless.
SimPRO makes it simpler for your team to view job history, costing, documents related, photos, and any other critical information to a job. Most administrative activities can be balanced out from your mobile device, computer, or tablet without the hassle of compiling stacks of paper for later use. The software can be used offline further increasing convenience.
Instant invoicing system
Cashflow is largely affected by the pace at which invoices are sent if not the management of funds. To rule out, time-related problems, it is always better to invoice as soon as the job is received. Due to automation advantages, you’ll be able to send out the price of a job and get paid for it swiftly. This ensures that you never run out of money apart from reducing the stress connected to late payments.
If these features sound like they can make a difference in your business, then you’ll love resources from the FREE webinar hosted by Bryn and Tiff. The webinar details how you can use job management systems to improve profitability in your field. It’ll also show you how you can be more organized and which one of the various job costing software is potentially a better pick for your business even if you’re already using one. If you’d like helpful job costing resources and cash flow information straight into your mailbox, then subscribe to our mailing list here. We hate spam so we promise not to spam you either. In the meantime, below is a snippet of the webinar.