[ Job costing ]

Job costing that starts with the estimate you bid

Most job costing starts at an accounting export and works backwards. This starts at the bid: the estimate you won becomes the budget, and every hour and every load recorded afterwards is measured against it.

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Job positionRiverside Commons

Budget

$284,000

Actual

$173,400

Approved days and receipts

Committed

$41,600

Ordered, not delivered

Left to spend

$69,000

What is actually free

The budget is the bid, frozen

At the moment an estimate becomes a job, EARTHVOQ copies it — quantities, hours, production rates and cost by code — into a baseline that never moves again. Editing the estimate afterwards does not change what you thought the work would cost, because that is the whole point of measuring against it.

Per cost code

Yours, in your own numbering. EARTHVOQ does not impose a chart of accounts.

With the assumptions

Budgeted quantity, budgeted hours and the production rate the bid assumed — so a variance can be traced to which of the three was wrong.

Change orders included

An approved change order adds its own budget line, marked as its own. The original bid rows stay untouched forever.

Cost enters through two doors and no others

An approved field day, and a purchase-order receipt. That constraint is why the number on the job page can be trusted: there is no third path where a cost arrives without somebody having approved something.

Door oneApproved field day

Crew hours × crew rate. Equipment hours × machine rate. Posted in one sealed transaction when a PM approves — approving twice posts once.

Door twoPurchase-order receipt

What actually arrived, at the price the PO froze. Receiving 1,500 tons of an ordered 2,000 posts 1,500 — not the order, and not the invoice.

A vendor bill is neither door. It records a payable and matches it against what was ordered and received; if the bill claims more than arrived, EARTHVOQ reports the difference and posts nothing. That is on the financial control page.

Committed is not spent

The number most job costing forgets. Money on an issued purchase order is spoken for whether or not the invoice has arrived, and a job that looks under budget while carrying $41,600 of open orders is not under budget.

Job positionRiverside Commons

Budget

$284,000

Actual

$173,400

61% of budget

Committed

$41,600

On 3 issued orders

Uncommitted budget

$69,000

Where the margin went

Bid to final, in stages, so the reason is visible rather than inferred.

At bid

30.4%

After change orders

31.8%

Current forecast

26.2%

Movement

−4.2 pts

A job that bid 30% and finishes at 26% tells a different story depending on whether the change orders helped and the field overran, or the reverse. Separating the stages is what makes the difference legible.

Questions people ask before trusting a cost number

Where does actual cost come from?+

Two places and no others: an approved field day, and a purchase-order receipt. A vendor bill records a payable and matches it against what was ordered and received — it does not post cost, because that would count the same delivery twice.

What happens if the estimate is edited after the job starts?+

Nothing. The budget is a frozen copy taken when the estimate became a job. Later estimate edits do not move it, because a budget that moves is not something you can measure against.

Can I see cost by activity rather than by job?+

Yes. Every cost carries a cost code, so budget against actual is readable per activity — which is where an overrun actually lives. A job-level total tells you that something went wrong, not what.

Related EARTHVOQ capabilities

Cost a job from the bid forward instead of from the ledger backward.

Fourteen days, no card. Bring a job you already finished and see whether the numbers land where you remember them landing.

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