Which Jobs Made You Money?

Why job costing beats gut feel

Ask an owner which jobs make money and they'll name their favourites. Run the actual numbers and it's often backwards: the big job that felt great paid worse per hour than the boring little ones you squeeze in around it. Quoting gets all the attention in a trade business; costing the finished job gets none, so nobody ever finds out which quotes were wrong.

The usual leaks: materials that crept past the allowance, hours nobody wrote down, and the "while you're here" extras done for free. A job that beats your target rate paid you. A job under it means you subsidised the customer. You just didn't get a receipt.

Run the last five jobs, then look for the pattern. It's rarely random: it's a job type, a customer type, or a kind of quote. Once you can see it, you quote the next one differently, or you stop taking that work at all.