Why Construction Job Costing & Management Software is a Must for 2021

Job Estimating

As construction professionals know, the first step to a successful construction project is the ability to provide an accurate job estimate. RB’s Construction job costing software provides a job estimating system that allows pool builders to enter customized template questions specific to their business so salespeople don’t miss any job specifications or questions necessary for creating a quote or job estimate. The job estimating system not only allows you to calculate the job’s selling price, it also lets you add inventory, parts, labor, and subcontractor expenses.

Job Contracts

Once your job costing software has helped you create a job estimate, RB’s Construction job software is equipped with a job contract option to instantly create a professional contract for the job that can be provided easily to your client. Most importantly, this job contract becomes the primary document that allows you to automatically set up and manage the progress of the job and track the job costs. You can also add ‘hidden items’ to the contract that will not appear on the customer’s sales order for things like special order items used for creating purchase orders. Though hidden from your client, these special orders are integrated with your business management software and can still be tracked.

Actual Job Costing

Determining the actual costs associated with the construction project is critical to the success of any job. Construction job costing and management software allows you to easily calculate the actual cost of each job and compare it to your estimate through a Job Costing screen in the software. For example, RB’s job costing software allows you to pull each job from a Sales Order/Contract, then gives you the option to enter the ITF (Insurance, Tax and Fringe) rate and select whether inventory, labor, expenses and subcontractors are taxable or non-taxable. Additionally, from inside the construction job costing software, you can select the prepaid tax option to denote if the usage tax was already paid on individual items. The software will also make it easy to add merchandise to an order by either selecting from your company’s inventory or by adding a special order part to the job. The construction job software will even let you select the both warehouse holding the item and the stage of the job where the items will be used.

By having an integrated construction job costing software system, users can point and click to create picking tickets for the merchandise and supplies to be taken to the job site and to deduct them from inventory within your business software. You can enter your expenses and subcontractors as you use them and send the invoices to your QuickBooks® accounts payable. All of this functionality will ensure builders are maximizing the profits on every job.

Construction job costing software enables builders to track the ongoing costs of construction work and the physical progress of the job. The construction job costing software needs to allow managers to view the bid price side-by-side with the actual costs so they can manage any variances and perform progress billings. Controlling variance is easy with the side-by-side comparison of the bid versus the actual costs.

In order to keep tight control of job costing, it’s important to have the ability to customize fields in the software so construction managers are able to control the profitability of each job stage and of each line item as well as track subcontractor costs along with your own labor, inventory, and expenses from the construction. Although construction costs will vary throughout the process, the goal is to manage those variances to ensure against lost profits.

Having construction job costing software that allows you to follow your actual expenses versus the budget is key to a robust software management system. Be sure you can view the estimated costs remaining, forecasts at completion, cost variances and other key job markers such as:

• Cost at completion
• Gross margin
• Margin percent
• Percentage complete
• Earned revenue
• Cost to date
• Margin recognized
• Total deposits and amount billed
• Total amount received for the job to date
• Current accounts receivable balance
• Remaining balance to be billed

Job Progress Management

Managing the progress of construction projects during an extremely busy summer is a challenge, making job-costing software all the more crucial. When selecting a job costing software, be sure you choose a system that allows you to customize the program for the physical steps of the specific types of construction and renovation jobs your company performs. The RB construction job software system provides project management tools to manage job progress with respect to your employees, subcontractors, and third party services, such as electrical inspectors. RB Retail’s Construction module even allows you to make “change orders” in the system by attaching a change order to the original job or a change to the cost of the job.

Having an integrated construction job costing system gives you the ability to manage the job with progress management tools that work hand-in-hand with your business software’s scheduler system to schedule appointments and daily job activities quickly and easily. Progress Management tools allow you to tack-on items such as permit numbers and other important notes and information necessary for the job. Additionally, a construction software system gives you the option to set up your own customized job stages and track all costs, including inventory, labor, expenses and prepaid usage taxes for each stage of a job in the construction module. The RB construction job software allows you to set dependencies in the system to ensure stages of the job are never scheduled out of sequence, avoiding discrepancies like having an electrical inspector scheduled before the electrical work is signed off as completed!

Progress reporting and billing are also necessary features in any construction job costing software. Managers need to be able to instantly print progress reports of all jobs that have an open or completed status in order to prevent errors and oversights and be able to have comprehensive oversight.

Busy summer seasons make construction software even more valuable by ensuring that progress billing is completed in a timely fashion for optimal cash flow. When looking at construction job costing software options, be sure the system can also perform progress billings from within the construction module to ensure accurate billings. For example, the RB construction job costing will calculate progress billing payments based on project completion and then be able to send these totals directly to your accounts receivable department so they can bill your clients.

Lastly, don’t forget about new mobile technology options that allow your in-field personnel to take payments to the job! Your team can take payments in the field on their mobile device, and those payments will immediately be listed in the payment screen.

With so many variables contributing to job cost, the need for an integrated construction job costing software system has never been greater. Now is the time to purchase a construction job costing software solution so your company can effectively control the costs associated with pool construction and ensure maximum construction profitability. Construction job costing software is becoming a ‘must for 2021’ as the summer promises to be another successful construction season.