Job-Costing & Margin Tracker
Most contractors know what they charged. Few know what the job actually cost until it's over — when it's too late to do anything. This tracks your real costs against your budget as the work happens, and shows your margin holding or slipping, cost code by cost code.
One-time purchase · Excel / Google Sheets · no subscription
Seen at 60% complete — while you can still change a sub, a scope, or a spend.
When your net margin is around six cents on the dollar, a single cost code running 10–15% over can erase the profit on the whole job. If you only see it at closeout, the money's already gone. Seeing it at 40% or 60% complete is the difference between a correction and a write-off.
Source: NAHB Remodelers' Cost of Doing Business Study, 2026 edition (FY2024 data).What it does
Set your contract price and budget each code — materials, labor, subs, equipment, permits — to your estimate. That's the plan you'll measure everything against.
Enter each bill and invoice with its cost code, and it rolls up automatically — no re-tallying, no month-end scramble. Just a running record of what the job is actually costing.
See your variance and percentage used on every code at a glance, with each one flagged on track, over pace, or over budget. The trouble spots surface before they compound.
Two honest projections: your margin if the rest of the job hits budget, and your margin if it keeps the current pace. The gap between them is your early warning.
Remodeler margin and cost figures are sourced and cited in the workbook, so you know what healthy looks like and how little slippage it takes to erase it.
Why it matters
A margin you can still save.
Accountants tell you what a job made after it's closed. That's history — useful for taxes, useless for the job. This tool works while the job is live, so a code running hot shows up as a warning, not a post-mortem. You can move a sub, tighten a scope, or catch a spend before it costs you the margin.
What's inside
Real spreadsheet, real formulas, Excel or Google Sheets. Ships pre-filled with a worked example; overwrite the yellow cells with your job.
A one-page guide and why tracking mid-job beats finding out at closeout.
Your contract price and cost budget by code — the plan you track against.
Log every real cost with its code; it rolls up automatically.
Budget vs actual, variance flags, and where your margin is heading.
Sourced remodeler margin and cost figures for context.
Pricing
The readout above shows a job quietly heading from a 30% margin to 19%. Catch that once — on one job — and this tool has paid for itself many times over. It's $129, once, and it's yours for every job after.
Instant download · 14-day money-back guarantee
Questions
Accounting tells you what happened after the fact — great for taxes, too late for the job. This is a live, per-job view: what each code is costing versus budget right now, and where the margin is heading, so you can act while the job is still running.
It's your judgment of how far along the job is. The tool uses it to project your final cost at the current burn rate. Update it as the job moves and the forecast updates with it.
The more you log, the sharper the picture — but even logging major costs by code gives you a useful read on variance and margin. It's a spreadsheet; you decide the level of detail.
No. Standard spreadsheet, opens in Excel or free in Google Sheets. No macros, nothing to install.
14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.