Accurate Job Costing Equals Increased Profit

Costing jobs accurately is something we all know is valuable but often don’t have the time to do well. Ab Initio’s Rhonda Ridge, creator of AdminBase, explains why it is so important to up the accuracy when it comes to managing our costs and discusses how integrated CRMs are making it so much easier to do.

Profit and loss statements are useful to a point. They provide an overview of the business, but they don’t give you the specifics. They don’t show you the details of individual departments, products, suppliers, or jobs. Some of these might drain your resources more than others. Some might be star features, maximising efficiencies and boosting profitability. It’s this level of detail, rather than the headline profit and loss figures, that is so important when it comes to making decisions about the future of your business. The devil is in the details, and the details are in the job costing. 

Being able to manage profit margins on specific areas of a business by job costing allows you to adjust the aspects that need adjusting rather than implementing one-size-fits-all solutions for the entire organisation that inevitably work for some facets but not others. However, for your job costing to be effective, it needs to be accurate. That means accounting for the indirect costs associated with every job as well as the direct costs. The best way to achieve such accuracy across the board is by using an all-encompassing management system.    

Capture ALL Costs

AdminBase offers this level of detail and accuracy to the window and door sector specifically, allowing installation businesses to correctly cost each job. Our installer management system allows you to gather the cost of all products from a supplier with a link to your accounts package (e.g., Xero, Sage, Quick Books) to save double-entering invoices. One of the biggest inefficiencies in any business is having to enter the same data multiple times, something we are always looking to eradicate with AdminBase. 

The system helps installation businesses keep track of supplier back-charge claims and can include these in job costings for greater accuracy. Also included in job costing reports are commission payments and stock items relevant to each contract. Tracking and collating this level of data allows installation businesses to have a much clearer picture of job costings by contract, which in turn allows for an accurate selling price to be set and, ultimately, improved profitability. 

Forwarned is Forearmed

The entire AdminBase system has been designed to improve access to information for greater efficiency. For example, the My AdminBase Diary App enables better communication between on-site personnel and office staff with the ability to upload any relevant information to any appointment entry. The App has also recently had an upgrade to make it even easier for installation managers to see the appointments assigned to their team members as well as their own. The update further increases visibility for relevant users and streamlines data so that installation teams and managers have more control over information relating to each appointment and project. 

Another good example of how AdminBase allows installation businesses to keep a close eye on resources is through the Taskboard feature. As soon as a job comes in, tasks are assigned to individuals and given a deadline. Every task is then tracked through the process to ensure everything is completed on time. If there are any issues along the way, such as one team being overloaded with work while another has spare capacity, this is easily identified and highlighted so that alterations to the work schedule can be made sooner rather than later. 

Without the correct systems in place, gathering information for accurate job costings can be a time-consuming and complex task. AdminBase makes it easy for installation businesses to keep a close eye on all aspects of the organisation, including more accurate job costings, to allow for more informed decision-making on a day-to-day basis and increased profitability overall. If you haven’t already, now is the time to get a better handle on your job costings with a tried, tested, and trusted CRM system.

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