How Do I... Track Job Costs

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Smart Contractor allows you to estimate job costs broken down into 5 separate categories:

• Materials,
• Labor,
• Equipment,
• Subcontract, and
• Other costs.

To do this, enter the estimated cost for each category in the appropriate prompts in the Edit Job Estimate form.

Why estimate item costs by cost category?

You do not have to estimate job costs by cost category. The program will work perfectly well if you only estimate a lump sum (that includes all costs - labor, etc.) for each item. You can do that by entering the estimated item cost in the prompt for Materials.

The reasons you might want to break estimated job costs into cost categories are:

1. So you can get cost analysis reports broken down by cost category. 
2. So you can post your construction expenses to a separate GL account for each cost category in QuickBooks.
3. To make it easier to estimate job costs.

If you do not break estimated job costs into cost categories, then...

1. Any cost accounting analysis reports will not be able to report separately by cost category.
2. You cannot post construction expenses to separate GL accounts for each cost category in QuickBooks.
3. You must enter the total estimated cost (including labor, etc.) of job items in the prompt for Materials.

When you enter costs in one or more of the 5 cost categories, the program will track and display these costs separately in various places in the program. Otherwise, the costs are tracked as a single amount for the job item.

How do I enter actual costs?

Once you have entered estimated costs for items in a job, you can enter their actual costs in the following ways:

• All job costs other than labor hours can be entered in the Purchase Entry form. Purchase entries can be in the form of bills (vendor or sub invoices), checks, or credit card purchases. Purchases can be for items that were included in the job estimate, or for "extra purchases" of items that were not in the estimate. See the Purchase Entry form topic for more information.
  
  If you are using QuickBooks integration, all purchases entered will be automatically copied to QuickBooks in the form of bills, or check or credit card purchase transactions. See the QuickBooks integration topic for more information.
  
• Labor costs can be entered in the Labor Hours Entry form.
  
  If you are using QuickBooks integration, all labor hours entries will be automatically copied to time tracking (time sheets) in QuickBooks, so that all you will need to do in QuickBooks is run payroll. See the QuickBooks integration topic for more information.
  

If you are not using QuickBooks integration, you can enter job costs and labor hours in the Job Progress Entry form - but - you will be required to total multiple purchases for job items, and total labor hours from multiple employees in order to do so.

For more information on whether to use the Job Progress entry form versus the Purchase entry and Labor Hours entry forms, see the Progress entry versus Purchase and Labor Hours entry topic.