Job & Project Costing
Job costing tracks the labor, materials, equipment, subcontractors, and overhead tied to each job, so you can see the real profit on every project. Corvus Accounting sets up and manages job costing for plumbers, electricians, HVAC companies, contractors, landscapers, and other trades businesses.
Without job costing, your P&L shows whether the business made money overall. It can’t tell you which jobs, customers, or service lines made it, and which ones quietly lost it.
By Suzanne Leonard, Founder, Corvus Accounting · Last reviewed November 2026
Free, no-obligation consultation. Serving small businesses nationwide.
What You'll See
Gross and net profit for each job, after its share of overhead.
How each job’s final cost compared with the bid, so the next bid is sharper.
Which work earns the most: installs, service calls, or maintenance plans.
Which crews or project managers bring jobs in on budget.
Labor hours and materials that consistently exceed the plan.
The data you need to price with confidence.
The Hidden Cost
A job can look profitable on gross margin and still lose money once overhead is counted. Overhead is everything it takes to keep the business running that isn’t tied to one job: office rent, insurance, trucks and fuel, software, admin staff, and owner time. Those costs never show up on a job ticket, but every job has to help pay for them.
That’s why we track overhead on every job, not just direct costs. We calculate an overhead rate from your actual books and apply it to each job, so every job report shows both gross profit and net profit after overhead.
| Example job | Amount | Margin |
|---|---|---|
| Job revenue | $10,000 | |
| Direct costs (labor, materials, subs) | $7,000 | |
| Gross profit | $3,000 | 30% of revenue |
| Overhead share (22% of revenue) | $2,200 | |
| Net profit | $800 | 8% of revenue |
Illustrative example. If your overhead runs 22% of revenue, any job priced below a 22% gross margin loses money, even though it looks profitable on paper.
How It Works
We decide how jobs, phases, and cost codes are tracked for your trade.
A job-costing-ready chart of accounts with direct costs separated from overhead.
Time, materials, and invoices tagged to the right job in your system, or in Zoho Books and Zoho Projects.
Job profitability reports, reviewed with you to adjust pricing and estimating.
Plain English
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Direct costs | Costs tied to one job: labor, materials, subs, equipment rental |
| Overhead | Costs of running the business: office, insurance, admin, trucks |
| Gross margin | Job revenue minus direct costs, as a percentage of revenue |
| Estimate vs. actual | How the job’s final cost compared with the bid |
| WIP (work in progress) | Revenue and cost on jobs that aren’t finished yet |
We use a custom job costing template built in Zoho and tailored to each trade.
FAQ
Job costing is a method of tracking every cost tied to a specific job or project (labor, materials, subcontractors, and equipment) and comparing it with what you billed. The result is a profit figure for each job, so you know which work is worth doing more of and which work needs a price change.
Contractors price work in advance, so a small miss on labor or materials on every job adds up fast. Job costing shows where estimates are off, which jobs lose money, and which customers or service lines are most profitable. It turns pricing from a guess into a decision based on real data.
Often, yes. Most modern accounting systems support job or project tracking once the chart of accounts and workflow are set up correctly. For businesses that want time, projects, and books fully connected, we implement Zoho Books and Zoho Projects.
It depends on your number of jobs, how your team tracks time and materials today, and the condition of your books. Most of the work happens up front in the setup. After that, job reports come from the regular bookkeeping workflow.
We total your overhead from your books, then convert it into a rate, typically a percentage of revenue or a cost per labor hour, depending on how your trade works. That rate is applied to every job so each one carries its fair share. We review the rate regularly as your overhead changes, so job reports always reflect your real costs.
Job and project costing is scoped and quoted after your free consultation, based on your trade, job volume, and whether we’re working in your current system or building a new one.
Related: Zoho Implementation · Fractional CFO & Strategy · Cash Flow Forecasting
Beyond the Numbers
Book a free, no-obligation consultation and we’ll show you what job-level profitability reporting looks like for your trade.
Stuck on one specific problem? Book a free problem solving session →
