Whether you’re a two-person team or a large firm, finding the best job costing software can be a challenge. It can also be something that makes the difference between your company’s success or failure.
The wrong job costing software can lead to bad estimates, big losses and frustrated employees. Luckily, finding the best job costing software for small business is doable—if you know what to look for.
How to do job costing well
Job costing is an essential process to help you predict how much time a particular job or project will take. It will also help you track what your costs will be, including labor, overhead, and expenses. By using historical data, you can establish a true estimate of the time required to complete a certain type of job.
3 benefits of job costing software
First, it’s important to understand why it’s so important to find the best job costing software for small businesses.
1. Profit protection
By tracking estimated vs actual costs of your jobs, you’ll be able to determine whether you’re currently on track to make a profit. If you’re not, you’ll still have enough time to make adjustments to bridge the gap.
2. Maximized efficiency
The best job costing software will help you identify which projects routinely cause problems, have delays, or are generally inefficient. By zeroing in on the places where your team is getting tripped up, you can make changes to improve your processes and your profitability.
Also, since the best job costing software for small businesses is one that removes as many manual processes as possible, you can cut down on administrative tasks. By putting costs and estimates into one interface, you’ll streamline operations and reduce unnecessary admin hours.
3. Improved estimates
Generating accurate estimates is arguably the most important element of small business job costing software. By understanding your labor and material costs, as well as how much time your employees are spending on each job, you can quote customers a figure that accurately reflects the true cost of the work you’re doing.
7 things you need in small business job costing software
Before you create your shortlist of job costing softwares for small business, you need to identify which features you need. Job costing software should help you categorize all costs so you can manage cash flow, expenses, and invoicing. The best job costing software will also integrate with your accounting, time tracking, or inventory management systems to give you a global view of every job, at every moment.
Look for the following features:
- Labor: Track the costs associated with employee time and attendance, including hourly, contract, and salaried labor.
- Equipment & materials: Track supplies, equipment rental, or material purchases.
- Job phases: Divide jobs into phases so you can see which parts of a project required more money or time to be executed properly.
- Purchase orders: Track purchase orders and associate them to individual jobs to improve visibility.
- Reporting: Gain valuable insights about overages or the most profitable type of jobs with detailed reporting.
- Cloud-based functionality: Login and track job costs from the office or the field.
- Integrations: Cut hours of time spent by your administrative team using a job costing software that automatically integrates with your other software.
All of these features will help you manage your estimated vs actual labor and job costs in real-time.
Job costing software + Time Tracker
When it comes to increasing profitability using job costing software, it’s important to find a solution that works with your time tracking system. That way, you can track job costs in real-time and get the critical information you need before it’s too late to make changes.
With Time Tracker, you can:
- Track time with free mobile apps
- Match schedules to job costing needs
- Manage business performance with key metrics
- Make job costing easier over time by using historical data to estimate future jobs
- Run simple reports to see how well a job is staying within budget
- Show reports on the customizable dashboard or have them sent to your inbox
