Job tracking software: hours, materials and margin for every job

You find out the margin once the job is over

Hours are on paper sheets or in a WhatsApp group, materials on delivery notes, expenses on receipts in the van. By the time someone puts it all together, the job is closed and invoiced. If you lost money on it, you find out too late to change anything.

And the next quote for similar work is still a guess.

What the software collects

• each person's hours, per job and per task, logged from the phone;
• materials taken from stock or bought specially;
• expenses, such as travel and subcontractors;
• photos and documents from the job, kept in the same place.

With each person's hourly cost, the software compares the job with the original quote as it goes. A job running over budget shows up while it is still open, and at the end of the year you can see which kinds of work pay and which don't.

From hours to invoice

In the CRM I use for my own business, the time logged on each task becomes a draft invoice on fatturapa.com, the Italian e-invoicing service. A job works the same way: hours and materials already recorded become the invoice lines, for a progress invoice or the final one.

If the job starts from a quote, the quote can come from quoting software and become the budget to stay within. For a technician's short visits, with a job sheet signed by the customer, see field service software.

How we start

1. We look at two or three finished jobs together: how they were quoted, what they cost, where the data was. This first analysis is free.
2. The first version handles jobs and hours, because without hours the rest means little.
3. Materials, expenses and invoices follow, in milestones paid one at a time.

When a spreadsheet is enough

If you run a handful of jobs and one person keeps track of them, a well-built spreadsheet is enough. Job tracking software pays off when many people log hours, several jobs run in parallel and you want the margin before the final invoice.

Frequently asked questions

How do employees log their hours?

From the phone or the computer: at the end of the day, or with a start and stop button on the task. We pick the way the team will actually use.

Does job tracking also cover attendance?

Hours on a job say what someone worked on. Attendance for payroll follows its own rules and has its own software: if needed the two can be connected, but rebuilding payroll is rarely worth it.

Can one job have several invoices?

Yes, as progress invoices or as a single final one. In my own CRM, each invoice records deposits and balance payments, and the amount still due is calculated automatically.

Read more

• The service: Custom business web apps
• Work of this kind: CRM gokalex
• More pages like this: Software for one specific job