The wrong job costing software can lead to bad estimates, big losses and frustrated employees. Luckily, finding the best job costing software for small business is doable—if you know what to look for. 

How to do job costing well 

Job costing is an essential process to help you predict how much time a particular job or project will take. It will also help you track what your costs will be, including labor, overhead, and expenses. By using historical data, you can establish a true estimate of the time required to complete a certain type of job.

3 benefits of job costing software

First, it’s important to understand why it’s so important to find the best job costing software for small businesses.

1. Profit protection

By tracking estimated vs actual costs of your jobs, you’ll be able to determine whether you’re currently on track to make a profit. If you’re not, you’ll still have enough time to make adjustments to bridge the gap. 

2. Maximized efficiency 

The best job costing software will help you identify which projects routinely cause problems, have delays, or are generally inefficient. By zeroing in on the places where your team is getting tripped up, you can make changes to improve your processes and your profitability. 

Also, since the best job costing software for small businesses is one that removes as many manual processes as possible, you can cut down on administrative tasks. By putting costs and estimates into one interface, you’ll streamline operations and reduce unnecessary admin hours.

3. Improved estimates

Generating accurate estimates is arguably the most important element of small business job costing software. By understanding your labor and material costs, as well as how much time your employees are spending on each job, you can quote customers a figure that accurately reflects the true cost of the work you’re doing. 

7 things you need in small business job costing software

Before you create your shortlist of job costing softwares for small business, you need to identify which features you need. Job costing software should help you categorize all costs so you can manage cash flow, expenses, and invoicing. The best job costing software will also integrate with your accounting, time tracking, or inventory management systems to give you a global view of every job, at every moment. 

Look for the following features:

1. Labor: Track the costs associated with employee time and attendance, including hourly, contract, and salaried labor. 
2. Equipment & materials: Track supplies, equipment rental, or material purchases.
3. Job phases: Divide jobs into phases so you can see which parts of a project required more money or time to be executed properly. 
4. Purchase orders: Track purchase orders and associate them to individual jobs to improve visibility. 
5. Reporting: Gain valuable insights about overages or the most profitable type of jobs with detailed reporting. 
6. Cloud-based functionality: Login and track job costs from the office or the field. 
7. Integrations: Cut hours of time spent by your administrative team using a job costing software that automatically integrates with your other software.

All of these features will help you manage your estimated vs actual labor and job costs in real-time. 

Job costing software + Time Tracker

When it comes to increasing profitability using job costing software, it’s important to find a solution that works with your time tracking system. That way, you can track job costs in real-time and get the critical information you need before it’s too late to make changes. 

With Time Tracker, you can:

• Track time with free mobile apps
• Match schedules to job costing needs
• Manage business performance with key metrics
• Make job costing easier over time by using historical data to estimate future jobs
• Run simple reports to see how well a job is staying within budget
• Show reports on the customizable dashboard or have them sent to your inbox

Ready to see how Time Tracker + Billing takes the guesswork out of job costing?

Start a free, 14-day trial. 

The post 7 Job Costing Software Features Your Business Needs Now appeared first on eBillity.

If you’re not asking that question after each project, you’re putting your business at risk—of losing money, scoping jobs incorrectly, missing deadlines, and more. 

How do you define estimate vs actual costs?

Put simply:

• Estimated costs are what you predict you’ll spend on a project, while 
• Actual costs are what you really end up spending. 

Estimated vs actual costs are often used in accounting, where prices are calculated before and after transactions so companies can predict gains and losses to make better decisions. But in reality, every business and department should be tracking and using this valuable data for projections, forecasting, budgeting, and more. 

4 reasons to track estimated vs actual costs at your company

1. Protect profits

If you aren’t tracking estimated vs actual costs, how do you know you’re on track to make a profit? Sure, you can wait until the end of the month and see if you’re in the red or in the black, but that’s no way to run a successful business. The only way to survive is to turn a profit, and you can’t do that if you’re spending more than you’re earning. By tracking estimated vs actual costs, you’ll know where profitability stands on a daily basis, and whether you’re selling your services at the proper rate to thrive. 

2. Improve job costing

Job costing is an essential process that will help you predict—quickly and clearly—how much time a particular job or project will take and what your costs will be, including labor, overhead, and expenses. Using historical data will help you establish a true estimate of the time required to complete a certain type of job or project. And the more you do it, the easier and more accurate your projections will become. Done correctly, job costing will allow you to not only tighten up your budget but also to better plan for all your company’s needs, from staffing to benefits to overhead. 

3. Keep projects on schedule

If you’re not tracking each job estimated vs actual costs, you’re less likely to know when a project is at risk of slipping off of schedule. If your estimates are low and your vendors request more resources to complete key steps, you’ll be on the hook to make it work whether you’re prepared to spend that money or not. At best, that means scrambling to move money around; at worst, it means stopping a project completely until you have the cash in hand to get it done. Either way, it derails your project, which can cause problems ranging from unhappy customers to unfulfilled contracts. 

4. Improve customer, employee and stakeholder satisfaction

Nothing is more frustrating to a customer or client than being asked for more money or more time for a job they thought was properly scoped—and that frustration isn’t unique to customers. Asking stakeholders to bear with you while you play catch-up or asking employees to work overtime because you failed to properly scope something is a recipe for disaster. By getting your house in order regarding estimated vs actual costs, you’re far less likely to have to deliver bad news about budgets or schedules. And that means happier customers, staff, and stakeholders.  

How time tracking can help you track estimated vs actual costs

One of the most important things time tracking does is give you instant access to historical and real-time data. That can help you see gaps in estimated vs actual costs and allow you to make adjustments as needed to project your outcomes.

With a solution like Time Tracker, you can:

• Use detailed reports to look at time spent on similar projects by task, employee, or contractor before creating estimates
• Know in real-time if your project is going over budget and where the problem is occurring
• Submit change orders for labor and materials within the system for those unforeseeable but necessary changes
• Automatically send alerts to remind employees to track or submit their hours so you know where you stand each day 

Most importantly, if you’re a business that works on a project basis, you can now easily track time against project estimates within Time Tracker. You can set up projects to include estimated time to complete a job based on a total hours, or by specific project activities. Learn all about it here. 

Ready to improve your estimates using Time Tracker? 

Try a 14-day free trial

The post Estimated vs Actual Costs—Why Tracking Both Is a Must for Your Business appeared first on eBillity.

A plan which includes definitive objectives for your project, how those goals will be accomplished, which resources are needed for specific tasks, and realistic budgets and timelines all need to be considered for profitable project management. Each individual plan needs to be well-researched and fluid in order to give you the best chance of success.

Here are some tips for accurately estimating your next project:

Know your team’s strengths. Before taking on any project and being able to accurately forecast its required elements, you need to have a deep understanding of your team’s strengths (and weaknesses). By carefully tracking previous time and labor costs, you will be well-placed to match up particular tasks with the employees who are best skilled in terms of performance or time-efficiency. You will know just which job can be completed by whom, and how each pairing can benefit your business for maximum profitability.

Understand client and stakeholders’ needs. You may need to dig a little deeper to truly get at the varied needs of your customer. Sometimes, asking them isn’t enough to get a full grasp of what your project needs to incorporate in order to fulfill their true wishes. The last thing you want when trying to flush out a plan is ambiguous and shifting expectations, from either side. Identify and document every single required variable within each project, review it with your client, and go over it a final time before having everyone sign off on the budget before any work begins.

Make a list of resources and costs. Just as you collected all of your customer data and put it in writing, each and every piece of what will make this project work also needs to be carefully documented. Now that you know what your customer needs and which employees are best placed to accomplish these goals within the agreed timeframe, you can add in any costs, materials, hour estimates, and outside services to accurately gauge what your project will look like in terms of overall cost and time. Be sure to properly compare prices; you want to be as cost-effective as possible.

Assign costs. You have your list of resources in hand, so now you can refer back to it as you determine your task costs. Get accurate estimates from suppliers and apply your knowledge of past similar jobs to calculate realistic hours. Place a cost on each item on your list, and use the information to calculate your overhead.

Make a project budget. With your list and costs available, it’s time to set a budget. Now that you have all of the information you’ve gathered, this part will be a breeze. The accuracy of your estimates will allow you to stick close to whatever budget works for the entire project, keeping in mind a balance of quality, service, and cost. But remember that a too-strict budget can be constraining when it comes to the flexible nature of any project. Know what kind of estimate or budget is best for your particular project before going ahead.

Get good tracking software. Tracking your progress collaboratively and accurately is the key to achieving all of your project goals. Evaluate progress in real-time, with a tracking software tailored to your needs. Time Tracker allows for mobile or desktop time-tracking from anywhere, and includes features such as timesheets, one-click timers, GPS tracking, and team visibility, making project management effortless.

Try a free, 14-day trial today to see how Time Tracker can help you save time and money. Not quite convinced? Try a free, 20-minute tour with a Product Specialist to help you get started today.

The post Tips For Accurately Estimating Your Next Project appeared first on eBillity.

Time management is an area most of us struggle with. It must be accurate and reliable. How are you going to implement it in your business, and how will its use benefit your profitability? Here are some of the reasons that time tracking is essential for profitability.

More effective project management. Time tracking helps you to understand where all of your employees’ time is being spent. Which tasks are taking the longest, and which employees could perhaps improve their productivity? If you know exactly how much time is spent on worked hours you’ll be able to easily set estimates and budgets for future projects. If you’ve underestimated the time an employee needs to complete a project in the past, you can adapt when you understand that they may need fifteen more hours for that task. Lost time equals lost money, so understand exactly where your time is going.

Knowing where to cut expenses. Knowing where perhaps too much time might be spent on projects, you also have the ability to cut excess costs. If your time tracking shows that there is an issue with time that has until now gone unnoticed and is affecting your business’s workflow, you will be able to pinpoint exactly where to address any issues. Are some jobs taking longer than they should? Increase your profits by reconciling deficits.

Having more accuracy in billing. Knowing what to charge is such an important part of your business, and tracking your hours down to the minute will be reflected on your client invoices. They need to see a transparent record of all of the services provided to them, and this process will establish trust with customers who will want to retain your services. Time tracking will also allow you to quickly adjust your pricing based on the time it has taken to complete projects. Use your data to help you better clarify profitable and fair pricing for your services.

Expertly process your payroll. Tracking the time in your business makes payroll more efficient. If you know exactly how much time was spent on each task, as well as which employee(s) worked on the project, it will be a breeze to calculate salaries, wages, deductions, and bonuses. Automated timesheets make this process simple, and reduces time writing it all out by hand.

Transparency of profits. The data collected from time tracking will allow you to see costs and profits at all times. These reports will also help with understanding which of your hours went under their estimated time. This means that you can cut costs and make more profit. If your time is billed by the project, this is particularly helpful to your profitability!

Not understanding hidden costs or data which is inaccurate costs your business. Time tracking allows you to organize your business goals by analyzing the data and then reworking plans to enable for more successful and profitable projects in the future.

Take the guesswork out of the time tracking process, and use an automated time tracker which is easy to use, reliable, and accurate. Know precise billable hours, create automatic timesheets, and understand inefficiencies in your business with Time Tracker. Sign up today for our free, 14-day trial. No credit card required, and no hassle. Enjoy the flexibility of tracking time anywhere, from your mobile, tablet, or laptop, and watch your business grow.

The post Time Tracking is Essential to Profitability. Here’s How. appeared first on eBillity.