See which jobs actually make money

What's inside

• Quote Calculator. Enter your estimated labour, materials, subcontractors, equipment and other costs plus the margin you want. It gives you the price to quote, and shows the same profit as a markup.
• Jobs. One row per job with the quoted price and the estimate by category. Actual costs fill in from the Costs tab, with the variance, actual profit and margin per job.
• Costs. Log every cost against a job. Labour can be hours × rate; anything else is an amount.
• Flags. A job turns red when costs go over the estimate, and amber when its margin falls below your target.
• Dashboard. Revenue, profit and average margin on completed jobs, profit after overhead, your pipeline by status, and your win rate.

Margin is not markup

This is where many trades lose money. Markup is profit divided by cost. Margin is profit divided by price. Adding 30% to your costs is a 30% markup but only a 23.1% margin. To keep a 30% margin you have to divide your costs by 0.7, which is a 42.9% markup. The Quote Calculator does this for you and includes a markup-to-margin table.

Overhead

Direct costs are what a job uses. Overhead is everything else: the van, insurance, phone, and the hours you spend quoting. Set an overhead rate on the Dashboard as a percentage of direct cost to see profit after overhead. A simple starting point is last year's overhead divided by last year's direct costs.

Using it

1. Price the next job in the Quote Calculator.
2. When you win it, add it on Jobs with your estimate.
3. Log costs on Costs as they happen.
4. When it's done, set the status to Complete and check the result.

In Google Sheets: upload to Drive, right-click → Open with → Google Sheets, then File → Save as Google Sheets.