Comparing jobs against their estimates

Job costing tells you about one job. This report answers the question above it: which of my jobs are healthy, and which ones are losing money? It compares every job against what it was estimated at, in one place.

Find it

It lives under Reports → Job costing comparison. There are shortcuts to it from the At-risk jobs widget on your dashboard and from Cost Comparison on the Jobs list’s toolbar, which are the two places you are most likely to be when the question occurs to you.

The report is part of Margin Intelligence, which every plan includes: while it is switched off for your business, the page says so and links to the tool to turn it on, and the Jobs list has no Cost Comparison button.

Read it across jobs

Each row is a job with its estimated figures, its actual figures and the gap between them. Approved, in-progress and on-hold jobs with an estimate are the default; tick more statuses to include completed ones when you are reviewing a period rather than managing today, and Show jobs without estimates for the rest. If none of your jobs has an estimate yet, the list is empty and says so; tick that box to see every job’s costs.

The value is in the comparison. A single job 12% over is a conversation; four jobs of the same kind all 12% over is a pricing problem, and only a view across jobs shows you that.

Understand the columns

The estimate comes from the job’s frozen baseline — what it was quoted at — or, on a job with no proposal behind it, the figures entered with Add estimates on its Financials tab. The actuals come from the hours logged, the expenses recorded and the equipment used, each at the rate it carried at the time, and the money the job has taken in.

While a job is still running there is a projected figure as well: what has been spent so far plus what is left of the estimate. That is the column that tells you a job is going wrong while there is still time to do something.

For what each of those numbers is built from, see Job costing and margins.