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Job costing: how do you see the margin on every job?

Job costing subtracts everything a job cost from what it billed: parts and equipment at cost, technician hours times each tech's rate, job expenses and subcontractor bills. In Fieldproxy every job has a costing tab with revenue, total costs and gross margin, and Insights rolls it up by job type.

This walkthrough opens one HVAC system install at Summit Home Services, a demo HVAC, plumbing and electrical company, and shows its job costing, the timesheets and expenses behind it, then gross margin by job type across the last 30 days.

Chapters

Summit Home Services is a demo company with fictional customers. Every screen is the real Fieldproxy product; some sequences are sped up.

Step by step

  1. Open the job

    Start from the job: customer, job total and whether it is paid.

  2. Read the job costing tab

    Revenue before tax, total costs, gross margin in dollars and percent, and labor hours.

  3. See where the money went

    A profit and loss for the job: materials and equipment at cost, service items, labor, expenses not billed, subcontractor bills and spiffs.

  4. Check labor from timesheets

    Travel and on-site time per technician, each at their own rate, add up to the job's labor cost.

  5. Tie expenses to jobs

    Receipts from the field are linked to their job; billable ones go back on the invoice with a markup.

  6. Compare job types

    Insights shows jobs, revenue, labor, materials, gross profit and margin for every job type.

Questions people ask

What is job costing in field service?
Tracking every cost of a job, parts, labor, expenses and subcontractors, against what it was billed, so you know the gross margin of each job instead of only the company total.
How is labor cost calculated per job?
From the job's timesheets: travel and on-site hours for each technician multiplied by that technician's pay rate. Breaks are unpaid and left out.
Do technician expenses count against the job?
Yes. Receipts are linked to their job. Expenses not billed to the customer reduce the job's margin; billable ones go back on the invoice, here with a 20% markup.
Can I see which job types are most profitable?
Yes. Insights shows revenue, labor, materials, gross profit, margin and gross profit per job for each job type over any period.
How long does it take to set up?
Fieldproxy builds your own field service management system around your workflows, and it can be live within a day.
Is Summit Home Services a real company?
No. Summit is a demo company with fictional customers. The screens are the real Fieldproxy product, recorded live and sped up.

Transcript

Show
  1. 0:00How do you know if a job actually made money? Job costing adds up everything the job cost: parts at cost, technician hours times their rate, expenses and subcontractors.
  2. 0:12Then it takes that from the invoice, so every job shows its own margin.
  3. 0:17Here it is on a real system, at a demo heating and plumbing company.
  4. 0:23Take this HVAC system install for Jessica Dixon. Seventy-five hundred dollars, booked by phone, done in a day, and paid in full. A great job, on paper. But how much of that did the business actually keep?
  5. 0:38The job costing tab answers that. Sixty-nine hundred in revenue before tax, thirty-eight ninety in costs, and a gross margin of three thousand and fifty-three dollars. Forty-four percent.
  6. 0:51And it shows where the money went: twenty-five hundred in equipment, a hundred and sixty in service items, five hundred and eighty in labor, and a six-hundred-and-fifty-dollar expense that never made it onto the invoice.
  7. 1:04Labor comes straight from the timesheets. Tom and Jake, travel and time on site, seventeen hours between them, each at their own rate.
  8. 1:14Expenses come from receipts the technicians send in. Each one is tied to its job, and billable parts go back on the invoice with a markup, so a four-hundred-and-twelve-dollar part bills at four ninety-five.
  9. 1:26Then Insights rolls every job up. Sixty-two percent gross margin across the last thirty days.
  10. 1:34And by job type, you see which work really pays. System installs bring in the most gross profit, eighty-five thousand from seventeen jobs. Drain cleaning runs at an eighty-five percent margin. And replacement estimate visits barely cover their own labor, at six and a half percent.
  11. 1:51Know your margin on every job, not just at the end of the year.
  12. 1:56Get your own custom field service management within a day, tailored to your workflows.
  13. 2:02Start at fieldproxy dot ai.

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