A busy year that did not feel profitable
The showroom sold more kitchens than last year. The fitters were booked solid. Yet the accountant's figures show gross margin down, and nobody can say why. Was it the big shaker kitchen that needed an extra week? The bathroom where the floor had to be relaid? The worktops that cost more than quoted? Everyone has a theory. Nobody has the numbers per job.
Without them, pricing next year is guesswork, and the jobs that quietly lose money keep getting quoted the same way.
Why job costs never meet the quote
The quote is built in one place, with materials and labour itemised. Costs arrive in another, spread over weeks: supplier invoices that cover several jobs, subcontractor bills sent monthly, extra days that exist only in the fitting diary, a skip hire on a card statement.
- Supplier invoices are not coded to jobs when they are entered in the accounts.
- Subcontractors invoice monthly rather than per job.
- Extra fitting days are not recorded as a cost against the job that caused them.
- Variations are charged to the customer, or not, with no record either way.
- Small costs such as consumables, parking and waste are never allocated.
What not knowing costs you
Without job-level margin you cannot see which products, job types or designers produce thin jobs. You cannot tell whether your fitting rates cover how long fits really take. Problems repeat because they are invisible. And when you want to raise prices, you do it across the board instead of where it is needed.
It also affects how you spend your own time. Owners of fitting businesses often spend evenings reworking spreadsheets to answer the question the system should answer on its own.
Job costing built from the records you already have
- The accepted quote is stored as the job's budget, broken down into units, worktops, appliances, sundries, fitting labour, trades and waste.
- Supplier invoices are read as they arrive, by an inbox parser or from Xero or QuickBooks, and each line is matched to the job using order numbers and delivery addresses.
- Anything that cannot be matched with confidence goes to a short queue for the office to assign.
- Fitting days and subcontractor visits are taken from the diary and valued at the rates you set.
- Variations are recorded with whether they were charged, so free extras become visible.
- Each job shows budget against actual by section, and a monthly view ranks jobs by margin so outliers stand out.
| Cost line | Quoted | Actual source |
|---|---|---|
| Units and doors | Quote | Supplier invoice matched by order number |
| Worktops | Quote | Fabricator invoice |
| Fitting labour | Days in quote | Days in the fitting diary |
| Plumbing and electrics | Quote | Subcontractor bills split by job |
| Waste and sundries | Allowance | Skip bookings and card spend |
We do not replace your accounts. Xero or QuickBooks stays the record of what was spent. Job costing reads from it and adds the link to each job.
What the numbers change
Within a few months you have margin per job, per job type and per product range. You can see if bathrooms with wet rooms need more days in the quote, whether a particular supplier's prices keep creeping above what you quote, or whether one kind of kitchen routinely overruns. Pricing decisions become evidence-based. And the end-of-year surprise stops being a surprise.
Is this how your costing works?
- You know overall margin from the accounts but not per job.
- Supplier invoices are not coded to jobs.
- Extra fitting days never appear as a cost anywhere.
- Variations are sometimes done free and not recorded.
- Pricing changes are made on instinct rather than evidence.