One of the most important aspects of managing a profitable service business is to track costs accurately. Whether your company works in HVAC, plumbing, electrical or facility maintenance, keeping track of labor, parts, subcontractors and overhead is very important. Without reliable job costing, businesses are at risk of underbilling, missing out on expenses, and mismanaging resources. That's why more organizations are leaving manual spreadsheets and paper records behind and are turning to field service management software such as Workcase, which makes job costing and profitability easier and more effective.
Job costing gives visibility to the actual cost of each service call or project. By dividing expenses into labor, materials, subcontractors and overhead, companies have a detailed picture on where money is spent. This provides the ability to make smarter pricing decisions, more tightly control budgets, and make more informed business decisions. Without the power of job costing, managers are often left guessing in terms of profitability, which can result in missed opportunities or financial losses.
The first step in proper job costing is to ensure projects are properly set up at the beginning. Setting the billing terms, allotting resources, and estimating costs often takes too much time with traditional ways. Workcase makes it easier to set up projects as managers can configure contracts, schedules, and billing in just a few minutes. Once projects are underway, all costs and activities are monitored in real-time, and no cost is overlooked.
One of the largest areas of gap in traditional job costing is time and cost. Technicians can forget to record the hours, lose the receipts, or fail to enter the details at the end of the week, leading to inaccuracies. This makes it hard to reconcile actual costs to estimates. With Workcase, technicians can record hours, expenses, and parts used directly from the field while on-site.
The resource allocation plays an important role in the control of job costs. Underutilized technicians waste payroll hours and overbooked technicians risk burnout and job delays. Workcase offers managers scheduling tools balance workloads, align resources with job requirements and reduce downtime. Real-time dashboards allow for spotting inefficiencies before they cost money.
For service companies, cash flow is the lifeblood of the company, and many have a problem getting paid on time for their services. When relying on manual data entry and late time reporting, the time needed to process invoices can be as much as weeks. Workcase automates this process by recording costs as they occur so that invoices can be sent immediately following the completion of a job.
Without reporting, job costing is only a set of numbers. Insights are what make data decisions. Workcase offers customizable dashboards and automatic reports that show profitability trends across projects. Managers can see which jobs are the most profitable and can identify areas of waste and adjust pricing strategies accordingly.
Manual job costing is time consuming and prone to errors whereas the automated systems remove the hassle from the job costing process. The difference between the two is highlighted in the table below:
| Manual Job Costing | With Workcase |
|---|---|
| Paper timesheets tend to cause error and data loss. | Technicians record hours and expenses on the move using mobile. |
| Invoices that are delayed for weeks after completion of project. | Invoices created instantly using correct cost information. |
| Managers have no visibility to live project costs. | Dashboards offer real-time analysis on job health. |
| High risk of underbilling because of missed expenses. | All labor, materials and overhead are tracked automatically. |
Be consistent when keeping track of labor, expenses and materials. This guarantees reliable data and easier comparisons between projects.
Provide field teams with mobile applications such as Workcase that allow them to record time and costs in real time. The less they depend upon paper, the less error you would find.
Don't wait until the end of a project to look at profitability. Monitor costs as they occur to prevent small overruns from becoming huge losses.
Accurate job costing is the bedrock of profitability in service companies. Without it, managers are left guessing about costs, and businesses run the risk of underbilling or overspending. With Workcase, job costing is simple, automated and reliable. From time tracking, resource scheduling, to invoice and reports, everything is connected in one platform. For HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and maintenance companies, this means fewer mistakes, faster payments, and more lucrative projects.
Job costing is the process of tracking labor, materials, subcontractors and overhead costs per project or service call to measure profitability.
Software, such as Workcase, will automate time and expense tracking, centralize project data, and provide real-time reporting for accurate costing of projects.
Real-time costing can help managers adjust quickly if costs rise unexpectedly to keep projects running and profitable.
Yes. Even small HVAC, plumbing or electrical companies benefit from decreasing the number of errors, accelerating billing, and enhancing cash flow.
By recording all job costs in the field, Workcase allows for invoices to be generated as soon as they are complete, reducing billing cycles and cash flow.
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