Job costing
22
MENTIONS
6
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 22 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Job costing".
Nov 4, 2026
Wayne HighlanderHOST
An estimate is what you think the job will cost.
Wayne HighlanderHOST
Job costing is what it actually costs.
Wayne HighlanderHOST
If you estimate 46 hours, but it actually took 58 hours, what happened? Maybe the estimate was wrong, but maybe it wasn't.
Wayne HighlanderHOST
Maybe you had to wait on other trades.
Daniel HonanGUEST
So that could include sales tax, payroll filings, income tax returns.
Daniel HonanGUEST
They might not also do job costing.
Daniel HonanGUEST
They could do job costing, but they won't just do it unless there's a clear process for it.
Daniel HonanGUEST
And, you know, your bookkeeper also will...
Daniel HonanGUEST
They're not going to do like a modified accrual or accrual-based books unless there's an explicit process on what that looks like.
Daniel HonanGUEST
So it's still your party, you know, we're just showing up to help you out there.
Jason PhillipsHOST
Right, right.
Jason PhillipsHOST
So you mentioned that you guys do job costing for some clients.
Shannon HowardHOST
The business still has to do the work.
Shannon HowardHOST
And this is where people think job costing is some boring accounting exercise.
Shannon HowardHOST
It's not.
Shannon HowardHOST
Job costing answers one of the most important questions in your business.
Shannon HowardHOST
What does this job still owe me? If you've collected 50 grand from a customer, but you still expect to spend 38,000 finishing their project, that matters.
Shannon HowardHOST
You cannot look at the 50,000 in the bank like it's 50,000 of free cash.
Shannon HowardHOST
Ask yourself this.
Shannon HowardHOST
If we stop signing new work today, could the cash already collected finish every job we currently owe customers? That question gets uncomfortable really fast because if the answer is no, I don't want you panicking, but I also absolutely want you paying attention.
Stephanie OwenHOST
A day dedicated to that without any technical distractions is really the goal.
Stephanie OwenHOST
And Chris, speaking exactly what you just talked about in terms of profitability and job costing, you're actually on one of our panels today.
Stephanie OwenHOST
Why do you think it's important for us to dive into that side of the business, even more than kind of just dovetailing off that last question?
Chris ZizzaHOST
You know what? The garbage bag test is one of the things, you know, we've taught this over the years.
Paul CapoteGUEST
So LMN was the, one of the missing links that I'm, that I, you know, need to implement.
Paul CapoteGUEST
I've been really dialing into my job costing-
Caleb AumanHOST
Cool
Paul CapoteGUEST
... before LMN, so the guy said, you know, I was at least on the right track in the sense of, like, the budget and all that.
Paul CapoteGUEST
I was super, way off.
Paul CapoteGUEST
Way, way off.
Paul CapoteGUEST
So it took a few years of, uh, you know, getting the job costing right and the bu- like, understanding the budget and how all that works.
Paul CapoteGUEST
You know, you preach about this a lot.
Scott SharrockHOST
Um, for example, in plumbing service, we will look at water heaters.
Scott SharrockHOST
We wanna know exactly what our replacement for water heaters, what was our material burden on those, which ties into job costing.
Scott SharrockHOST
Job costing is a huge thing that we coach here.
Scott SharrockHOST
Um, every week our service managers meet with our warehouse and fleet manager who handles the job costing, so that's the purchasing side of it.
Scott SharrockHOST
POs are aligned.
Scott SharrockHOST
Um, that's a big part of your service manager's job.
Scott SharrockHOST
I don't know if our managers could always tell you what their job costs were at and who to coach.
Scott SharrockHOST
That's a big thing.