What the work actually cost — receipts, labor, mileage — logged against the job so profit is a measured number rather than an estimate you never checked.
Expenses
Log spend against the job it belongs to, from Expenses: material runs, equipment rental, fuel, tools, permits, subcontractor payments, and the rest. Fourteen categories cover the ordinary shape of a contracting business.
Logging against the job is what makes job profitability real. An expense filed to the business generally tells you that you spent money; an expense filed to a job tells you which work made you money.
- Materials · Labor · Equipment · Fuel · Tools.
- Insurance · Permits · Advertising · Office · Utilities.
- Subcontractor · Vehicle · Meals · Other.
- Attach the receipt when you log it.
Pro tip: Log the receipt in the truck, before you drive off. Receipts that go in a pocket become receipts that go in a wash, and an unlogged expense makes a job look more profitable than it was.
Budgets
Set planned costs per job and compare them against actual spend as the work goes. Overruns are flagged while there's still a job left to adjust, rather than discovered in a report after everyone's gone home.
- Planned versus actual, per job.
- Over-budget items are flagged.
- Labor cost flows in from approved timesheets.
Mileage
Log trips with their purpose and the job they were for. It's a tax deduction most contractors under-claim simply because they never wrote the trips down.
- Trips log against jobs.
- Purpose recorded for tax records.
- Feeds the expense reports.