Most shops can tell you last week’s deposits. Fewer can tell you which of those jobs covered labor burden, materials, and the trip. Job costing is that second question.
Start from the bid
A scorecard without a bid is just a receipt. Write the number you promised — from a pricebook, not from memory — then open the job.
Load the hour before you log it
A wage is not a shop rate. Use the labor burden calculator for contractors so taxes and insurance sit inside the hour.
Log materials and hours
Materials are the ticket. Hours are the ones that actually happened. Check the math on the job margin calculator before you trust a gut number.
Read the scorecard
Bid, actual, margin dollars, margin percent. Profitable or not. Then look at history before you bid the next condenser, panel, or water heater the same way. The cadence for the line-item version is estimate vs actual: how to run it on every job.
What this guide is not
Field-service OS runs the day (schedule/SMS/CRM). Shop OS runs jobs and money (scorecard).
We do not walk through dispatch, SMS, or an AI estimator. See kit vs platform if you are choosing software. Sketch the numbers on the job margin calculator.
This is a sketch. CostPerJob keeps bid + costs on the job scorecard.