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Job Costing

Pricing Jobs So
You Know They're Profitable.

Being fully booked and being profitable aren't the same thing. Here's how to actually tell them apart.

This is a practical guide, not tax advice. It's about a habit worth building, not a rule to follow to the letter.

01Why "I'm busy" doesn't tell you anything

A full diary feels like success, but it can quietly hide jobs that are losing you money, if the quote was too low, the materials cost more than expected, or the job ran long. Without checking, you can't tell a genuinely good job from one you'd be better off not repeating.

Job costing is just comparing what a job actually made against what it actually cost, per job, not just across the business as a whole at year end.

02The three numbers that matter

  • What you quoted — the price you agreed with the customer before starting.
  • What you actually invoiced — sometimes different from the quote if the scope changed, this is the number that matters, not the original estimate.
  • What the job actually cost you — materials, subcontractor or labour costs, and a reasonable allowance for your own time.

The gap between the second and third numbers is your real margin on that job. Do this across a handful of jobs and patterns show up fast, certain types of work, certain customers, or certain material-heavy jobs often turn out less profitable than they feel in the moment.

03The habit that makes this easy

You don't need software or a spreadsheet you'll abandon in a fortnight. The only real requirement is tagging costs to the job they belong to at the point they happen, a line on a receipt, a note on a WhatsApp photo, the job address or the customer's name is usually enough.

Everything else, pulling it together into an actual profit-per-job picture, is admin work that can sit with whoever's doing your books, not something you need to build yourself.

Often missed Your own time is a real cost, even though no invoice comes in for it. A job that "only" cost you materials but took three days longer than quoted still cost you those three days, price it in, even roughly, or every job will look more profitable than it actually was.
Also worth knowing You don't need this for every single job forever. Even doing it for a month or two gives you a genuinely useful baseline, what your typical margin actually looks like by job type, which you can then use to price similar jobs with far more confidence next time.
Want to know which jobs are actually worth it?

This is exactly what job costing on the Grow package does for you, built from the quotes and invoices you're already sending, no extra step on your end.

This guide is general practical advice for pricing and job costing, not personalised financial advice. Your own margins and cost structure will vary by trade and region.