Job Costing Best Practice

In this article:

Set-Up Items & Item Groups

Add Estimated Costs

Add Actual Costs

Track Your Profits & Costs

Set Up Items & Item Groups 

Items 

• Create Material Items- Make sure all materials are added into SingleOps as items. Use the sub-category on an item to differentiate materials by division.
  Tip: Use Production Rates to calculate material quantity for your sales reps.
  
  • Examples
    • Plants
      
    • Irrigation/Drainage Parts
      
    • Fertilizers/PHC Chemicals
      
    • Install/Design Build Materials
      
    • Sod
      
• Create Labor Items- Make sure you have at least one labor line item created with the Unit of Measure set to Man Hours. You may need different labor line items if you have different production rates to help calculate the labor. 
  Tip: Use Production Rates to calculate estimated man hours for your sales reps. 
• Create Equipment Items- Add equipment items for any rented equipment. Add default cost per hour, and use Per Hour unit of measure.
• Create Expense Items- Add expense items for Miscellaneous Materials, Gas, or any other last minute purchases. 

Item Groups

• Create Item Groups- Item Groups allow you to track labor and materials without showing these prices to your customer.
  For services that don't change job to job, preload labor and materials. Otherwise, add the labor line item to your item group settings, and materials can be added by the sales rep. 
  • Examples
    
    • Planting/Install/Irrigation - Materials added on job creation
      
      
      
    • Turf, Fert, PHC
      
      
      
      

Add Estimated Costs 

Sales Reps should be adding estimated costs when creating the bid. They can do this by adding material, labor and equipment items. If the item is marked 'actual' and a quantity and cost are included, then the estimated cost will be tracked. 

Add Actual Costs 

• Materials
  Crew, managers or office staff can 'Verify Quantities' on completion. Here they can add new material/equipment items, or update actual quantities used. 
  
  Additionally, materials can be added by creating a Purchase Order associated with the job.
• Labor
  Create Labor Resources so your crew can track time on a job directly from the My Day Page.
  
  Tip: If using labor resources, make sure your labor settings are selected to Yes for reporting. If not using labor resources, you can manually adjust man hours on your labor line item.
• Expenses
  Expenses can only be added on job completion. Learn more here.

Track Your Profits & Costs

Estimated vs Actual Job Cost

SingleOps will automatically generate a Job Cost Document that breaks down estimated v actual costs on a job.

Visit Profit Margin Report- Easily see how profitable your visits are. This report will subtract all COGs and Expenses from Sales, then give a profit %. 

Job Labor Report- Track estimated v actual labor hours, and see a job's efficiency.
Note: A labor line item must be added to the job for it to be included on this report.