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Job Costing · Pacific Northwest Trades
Job Costing for Contractors in Oregon, Washington & Idaho
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 problem
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
Signals you need this
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
Three or more and there's real money sitting in the gap. Usually it's not one big leak. It's a few small ones that compound every month.
Before and after
Without a job costing system vs. With Sentric managing job costing
What we build
The actual work, not a framework.
Cost codes that match how you actually work
Not a generic chart of accounts. A structure built around your divisions, your job types, and the way your crews already talk about work, so nobody has to translate anything to use it.
Cost capture at the source
Labor from the field app, materials from the supplier feed, subs from their invoices. Configured to land on the right job the day it happens instead of getting sorted out later by hand.
Estimate versus actual, on every job
The comparison that makes the whole thing worth doing. What you thought it would cost, what it cost, and where the difference came from. That's the feedback loop your pricing has been missing.
We build it inside the tools you already pay for. If your field service platform and your accounting software can talk to each other, we make them. If something genuinely has to change, we'll say so and tell you why, but the tool was rarely the problem.
How it works
Three steps. No homework.
Walk one job
Thirty minutes. We take a real job, warts and all, and follow it from the day you sold it to the day the money hit the account. Every place it catches gets written down. You keep what we find whether you ever hire us or not.
Rank the friction
Job Costing might not even be your biggest leak. If something else is costing you more, we'll tell you and start there instead.
Build it and run it
We build the fix, train your people on it, and stay on it until it holds. Then we take the next one. Everything we build is documented and yours, whether you keep us for a year or just a month.
Questions
What owners ask us first.
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.
What if our historical data is a mess?
That's the most common starting point. We clean up the historical data as part of the system build so you have a clean baseline to work from going forward.
Do you require long-term contracts?
No. Month to month. You stay because the work is delivering.
What cities do you serve?
We serve trades contractors throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. See the full city list below.
Can job costing help with our flat-rate pricing?
Yes. Flat-rate pricing built without real job costing data is a guess. Once we have your actual labor burden, call duration averages, and material costs by service type, your pricebook becomes something you can defend and update with real numbers.
Where we work
Job Costing across the Northwest.
All work is remote, so location never changes what we can do. These pages cover the market specifics for each city.
Portland, ORSalem, OREugene, ORBend, ORMedford, ORHillsboro, ORGresham, ORCorvallis, ORAlbany, ORGrants Pass, ORRoseburg, ORKlamath Falls, OR
Seattle, WASpokane, WATacoma, WAVancouver, WABellevue, WAKennewick, WAYakima, WABellingham, WAOlympia, WAEverett, WA
Related
Related systems we also manage
Thirty minutes is enough to find out if this is a problem in your operation.
The audit is free. No pitch. No commitment. A straight read on where your systems stand.
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