Job costing after the job, so the next one is right

Every finished job contains the answer to a question the business keeps asking: did that price work.

Almost nobody looks, so the next quote repeats whatever the last one assumed, including the parts that were wrong.

Three comparisons cover most of it

1. Labour hours quoted against hours recorded, per job.
2. Materials allowed against materials bought, including the ones nobody billed.
3. Travel assumed against travel taken, which is the one most quotes ignore.

Each needs a number captured during the job rather than reconstructed afterwards, which is the only real barrier.

Feelings and figures disagree

The job everybody remembers as terrible often made money, because the quote allowed for the difficulty. The quiet job that ran long lost more and nobody noticed.

That is the argument for measuring. Memory selects for stress rather than for margin.

Unbilled extras are the biggest single leak

Work added on site and never invoiced looks like an overrun in the figures. It was not an overrun; it was a gift.

Separating the two matters, because they have different fixes. One is a pricing problem and the other is a paperwork problem.

Group by job type before drawing conclusions

One bad job proves nothing. Ten bathrooms together show whether the price for a bathroom works.

Most businesses find one category consistently thin. That category is usually the one they win most often, which is exactly why they win it.

Travel is where small jobs disappear

An hour of driving on a two hour job is a third of the day. A quote built on time on tools loses money on every short call.

Our guide to planning the day's runs covers reducing it, and a minimum charge covers what remains.

Review monthly, in half an hour

An annual review arrives too late to change anything. A month of finished jobs is enough to see a pattern and early enough to act.

Half an hour with the ten most recent jobs is the whole exercise. The discipline is the hard part, not the arithmetic.

Feed the finding back into the price list

A review that ends in a conclusion changes nothing. The output has to be a changed number: an hourly rate, an allowance, a minimum charge.

A priced item list makes that a single edit that reaches every future quote, rather than something to remember at the next one.

Write down why a job went wrong

A one line note against the job beats any spreadsheet. Access was terrible, the customer changed their mind twice, the walls were not square.

A year of those notes prices the next difficult job accurately, and gives the business permission to decline a repeat of the worst ones.

Quoting time is a cost as well

An evening spent quoting a job the business never wins is a real cost carried by the jobs it does win.

Tracking the win rate per job type shows where that effort pays. A category won one time in ten needs either a different price or a polite decline.

Rework belongs in the costing

A callback to fix something is labour spent on a job already invoiced. Leaving it out flatters every job that needed one.

Our guide to warranty callbacks covers logging them by cause, which is what turns a cost into a fix.

What to change first

• Hours, materials and travel record during the job, not after it
• Unbilled extras separate from genuine overruns
• Jobs group by type before anybody draws a conclusion
• Travel time appears in the comparison, not just time on tools
• Ten recent jobs get half an hour each month
• Every finding ends as a changed number in the price list