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Material Tracking · Pacific Northwest Trades
Material & Inventory Tracking for Contractors in Oregon, Washington & Idaho
Untracked material costs silently compress margins on every job. We put systems in place to capture them before they disappear into the job cost.
The problem
What material & inventory tracking means for a trades business.
Material and inventory tracking for a trades business means knowing what materials went to which job, what they cost, and how that compares to what was estimated. For businesses with trucks stocked with inventory, it also means knowing what's on each truck, what needs to be restocked, and whether material is walking off jobs. We serve HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing contractors across the Pacific Northwest.
Most trades businesses track materials informally at best. Technicians pull from the truck, write it down if they remember, and the job gets closed with an estimate rather than an actual material cost. The difference between actual and estimated shows up as margin compression that nobody can explain. ---
Job closeouts reflect actual material costs rather than estimates, giving you true margin data
Inventory levels are visible and restocking happens before shortages impact active jobs
Material accountability at the job level creates visibility that reduces untracked loss
Supplier invoices match job records through a documented process that doesn't depend on memory
The gap between estimated and actual material costs closes as tracking improves over time
Cost data from material tracking feeds directly into pricebook accuracy and future estimate precision
Signals you need this
Who needs this.
Trades businesses with field trucks stocked with inventory where pullage is tracked informally or not at all
Contractors where material costs on larger jobs regularly exceed the estimate without clear explanation
Operations where someone discovers a material shortage mid-job because inventory levels weren't known
Roofing and HVAC businesses where material cost volatility makes cost tracking especially critical to margin protection
Any trades owner whose job closeout uses estimated material costs because actual capture wasn't happening in the field
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 material and inventory tracking vs. With Sentric's material tracking system
What we build
Materials that stop disappearing.
Inventory on every truck
What's on each truck and at each site, tracked as it moves instead of guessed at quarterly.
Variance that raises its hand
Ordered versus used shows up per job, so shrinkage and over-ordering get caught while the job is open.
Costs landing on the right job
Material spend allocates to jobs in real time, which is what makes your margin numbers true.
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
Material & Inventory Tracking 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.
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.
How long does implementation take?
Most system builds run 30 to 60 days depending on the state of your current setup. The free audit tells us what we are working with before we scope the build.
Can you work with our existing bookkeeper or CPA?
Yes. Our work is on the operational and technology side. We make sure your financial partners get clean, accurate data to work with.
How is this different from hiring an office manager?
An office manager executes inside whatever systems exist. We build the architecture and manage it so the systems stay current as the business grows.
What trades do you work with?
HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing contractors doing $2M to $8M in annual revenue across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
What does the free 30-minute audit cover?
We review your current systems, find where margin or time is leaking, and tell you what it is costing. No pitch and no commitment.
Do you implement or only advise?
We implement and manage. We configure your tools, document your processes, and run the systems ongoing.
Where we work
Material & Inventory Tracking 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.
Book 30 MinutesNo long-term contract. No commitment. No homework after the call.