Jobs rarely lose money all at once — they bleed a little at a time across labor, materials, and equipment until the margin is gone before you notice. This tracker compares budgeted vs. actual cost by category in real time, flags variance as it happens, and shows a live budget-used percentage so you can catch an overrun while there's still time to act on it.
Budgeted $14,200. Actual: Labor $4,100 (est. $4,800), Materials $5,400 (est. $5,200), Equipment $900 (est. $800), Permits $380 (est. $400).
Contract $85,000. Materials on budget at $28,000. Labor ran $31,000 vs. $24,000 estimated.
Mulch + plants $1,200, Labor $1,800, Equipment $350, Permit $0. Contract $4,800.
Net profit margins of 3–8% are common for general contractors after all overhead and labor. Specialty contractors (HVAC, electrical, plumbing) often see 10–15%. If your net margin is below 5%, you're likely under-pricing labor, under-tracking overhead, or doing too much work for free (warranty callbacks, planning). Use this tracker to see where your margin is actually going.
Track at minimum: Labor (wages + burden), Materials, Equipment (owned and rented), Subcontractors, Permits & inspections, and Overhead allocation. Separating these lets you see which category is eating your margin. Many contractors are surprised to find equipment costs are the largest variance from estimate to actual.
Variance = Budgeted cost − Actual cost. Positive variance means under budget (good). Negative variance means over budget (problem). Track variance by category to diagnose root causes. If labor is always over budget, your estimating is off. If materials are over, you may have scope creep or pricing errors.
Partway through a job, multiply your current cost-per-unit by remaining units to project final costs. If you're 40% through a job and have spent 55% of the budget, you're trending 37% over budget at completion. Catching this early lets you have a scope conversation with the client before the problem is too big to fix.
Yes. Allocate a portion of fixed monthly overhead to each active job using a percentage of labor hours or revenue. If overhead is $10,000/month and a job runs 40% of your capacity that month, allocate $4,000. Not tracking overhead per job makes profitable-looking jobs actually unprofitable.