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Financial Operations · Kennewick, Washington
Job Costing for Contractors in Kennewick, Washington
Most trades businesses run on gut feel about which jobs are profitable. The ones doing $5M or more on solid margins run on real job costing data. Here's how we build that.
The local market
Kennewick · WA · Job Costing for Contractors Market
Federal contract work in the Tri-Cities area carries specific financial documentation requirements around prevailing wage compliance. Accurate job costing also matters more in a market where many contractors are bidding the same federal and commercial work, and margin protection requires knowing your costs precisely. See the Job Costing for Contractors overview and trades support in Kennewick.
What job costing actually means for a trades business.
Job costing is the system that tells you what you actually made on a specific job, a specific service type, or a specific technician, after accounting for every labor hour, material cost, and overhead allocation. Without it, you're comparing your bank balance in January to your bank balance in December and calling that a profit report. We build this for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing contractors across the Pacific Northwest.
For most trades businesses doing $2M or more, the gap between what they think they're making and what they're actually making is significant. Flat-rate pricing hides it. Invoice totals hide it. The only thing that reveals it is a properly built job costing system connected to your field service platform and your accounting software.
You know which service types are profitable and which are breaking even or worse
You can identify which technicians are generating margin and which are consuming it
Material overruns show up during the job, not after it closes
Your flat-rate pricing is built on real labor burden, not industry averages
Year-end tax conversations stop being surprises
You can make a real case for which jobs to take and which to walk away from
Fit
Who needs this.
HVAC contractors doing $2M or more who can't tell which call types are profitable
Plumbing companies with field crews where material costs routinely exceed estimates
Electrical contractors doing commercial work without phase-by-phase costing
Roofing businesses where material cost volatility is eating margin before the job ends
Any trades owner who gets to December and can't explain where the money went
Before and after
Without a job costing system vs. With Sentric managing job costing
Related
Related systems we also manage
Questions
What owners ask us first.
How does job costing specifically help Kennewick contractors compete?
Davis-Bacon prevailing wage compliance requires wage classification by trade, certified payroll reports for every pay period on covered projects, and fringe benefit documentation. We build the system that produces all of it without manual calculation every two weeks.
We serve Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco. How do you build systems for a Tri-Cities operation?
The Tri-Cities are effectively one service market and we build the dispatch, job costing, and reporting systems around the full three-city footprint. The goal is operational clarity across the whole coverage area, not just the headquarters location.
What software do you use for job costing?
We work with whatever FSM platform your business is already using, whether that's ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, or another platform. The job costing infrastructure we build connects your field service data to your accounting software, typically QuickBooks Online.
Do we need to switch software to get proper job costing?
Usually not. Most trades businesses have FSM platforms capable of job costing. The issue is they're not configured correctly to produce it. We fix the configuration and build the reporting that pulls the data into usable form.
How is this different from bookkeeping?
Bookkeeping tells you what came in and what went out at the company level. Job costing tells you what you made on a specific job after allocating every cost to it correctly. They work together, but job costing requires field service integration that standard bookkeeping doesn't provide.
How long does it take to set up?
Initial setup is typically part of the system build phase, which runs 30 to 60 days depending on the state of your current data. The ongoing management of job costing data is part of our monthly retainer.
About Sentric Group
Sentric Group provides job costing for contractors for trades contractors in Kennewick, Washington and throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. We serve HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing businesses doing $2M to $8M in annual revenue. Founded by Tim Volner in 2026. Less Friction. More Freedom.
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