Job-Cost Accounting
Part of our “Building Business” series appearing in Fine Homebuilding magazine.
By HELM co-founder mel baiser
Use cost codes to track projects costs, improve estimating, and stay on budget.
If you run a construction or trade specialty business, you’ve likely learned—maybe the hard way—that good bookkeeping practices are non-negotiable. Between deposits, retainage, billing schedules, and stacks of receipts, it’s easy to lose track and get into trouble without a good system in place. Job costing is an accounting method that associates individual job costs (materials, labor, trade partners, equipment) with a specific project. Unlike general bookkeeping, job costing allows builders to better understand their real-time margins on a project-by-project basis, tracking actual costs versus revenue. With the adoption of cost codes (and good estimating and job-costing habits), a business owner or project manager should also be able to determine estimated versus actual costs and more quickly identify areas where a project is going off track.
Continue reading at Fine Homebuilding Magazine (Dec/Jan 2025, Issue 336)