If you are following along with our previous blogs, you now understand the process of job costing. The process of real-time budgeting and cost tracking is job costing in a broader sense. There is a bigger and wider view of the process as it begins from the budgeting side of things.

Being realistic with your budget and as accurate as possible with it, will ensure the blueprint can be a reliable point of reference. These goals need to be short-term and long-term and need to be realistic. A 100% profit growth could definitely be possible for anyone. However, it is very unrealistic. When you and your team go over real goals and how to attain them, then you can monitor progress efficiently. 

Using a CRM is the most effective way to ensure costs and profits are entered immediately and monitored. Regardless of the one used, the idea is to ensure costs and profits are up-to-date and as accurate as possible. A CRM allows you to monitor this per job and continuously monitor where your team is at. 

Next, we need to establish the frequency for conducting reviews. Will it be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly? Another option for scheduling reviews is based on the completion of a certain number of jobs, such as after completing a couple of jobs or after every 10 jobs. The purpose of these reviews is to assess the alignment of profits and costs with the budget set at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Finally, the objective is to thoroughly assess and fine-tune your budget.. Was your budget incorrect? Were your goals too far-fetched? Are there too many unnecessary costs? These are a few of many questions that can be asked to understand where things need to be adjusted. For instance, perhaps there are too many under-performing salespeople, or maybe the estimator is overlooking crucial details. These are a couple of things that can be explored when answering these questions. In all, your goal is to change your conditions to ensure you are meeting your goals, meeting your budget and tracking costs effectively.