Construction Financial Management can be daunting, but by using Buildertrend's financial features in tandem, you can manage your financials with ease. From estimates and budgets to invoicing and payments, Buildertrend streamlines your workflow, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and better financial control.
Getting Started
While Buildertrend's Financial Management tools are extremely useful for staying on track with your job's financials, understanding the ideal workflow and how all features work together is key to maximizing efficiency and accuracy.
What is the difference between Estimating and Job Costing?
Estimating is the process of predicting the total cost of a construction project by analyzing materials, labor, equipment, subcontractors, overhead, and profit. It’s used to determine the feasibility of a project, prepare bids and to establish a budget.
Job Costing is a financial management method used to track and allocate all costs associated with a specific project. It’s used to monitor expenses, ensure profitability, and make real time data-driven decisions by breaking down costs into detailed components.
Estimating Workflow
Construction estimating is the process of forecasting the total cost of a project by evaluating materials, labor, equipment, subcontractors, and overhead expenses. It plays a critical role in budgeting, bidding, and financial planning, helping contractors set competitive prices while ensuring profitability.
A well-prepared estimate minimizes financial risks, prevents cost overruns, and ensures projects stay within budget. By leveraging historical data, supplier quotes, and construction management software, you can improve accuracy, streamline the estimating process, and make informed financial decisions.
Create Rough Estimate
The first step in Buildertrend's Ideal Financial Workflow is to create a rough estimate based on limited details utilizing the Estimate feature.
This estimate provides a ballpark figure for the project's overall cost, helping stakeholders determine feasibility and secure initial budgeting. At this stage, you will rely on historical data, industry benchmarks, and square footage pricing rather than detailed material takeoffs or finalized plans.
While rough estimates are not always highly precise, they serve as a crucial starting point for project planning, helping you set realistic expectations and provide your potential client with a projected cost for the project.
For a step-by-step overview of creating your estimate, review this article.
Refine Scope and Price
Once your rough estimate is created, next you will refine the scope and pricing for the project.
Utilizing Buildertrend's bids and selections features will help you pinpoint the actual costs of labor, material, equipment, subcontractor work, overhead, and profit.
Using bids, you can gather true costs from your subcontractors and vendors, ensuring accurate pricing for outsourced work and materials. Meanwhile, selections allow clients to make choices that directly impact project costs, giving you a clearer picture of the final budget.
Additionally, you can use the options functionality within the estimate to present optional scope items, giving clients the flexibility to choose features that best fit their needs and budget.
As you refine these details, drafting proposal(s) that outline the costs and scope enables collaboration with your client, ensuring alignment on the final project details.
For a step-by-step overview of features mentioned in this step, review the following Help Center Articles:
Lock in Contract Price > Send to Budget
After finalizing your project costs and scope, securing a signed proposal establishes the Contract Price with your client.
Once confirmed, this Contract Price can be sent to the job costing budget, allowing you to accurately track expenses and begin job costing with confidence.
For a step-by-step overview of Locking in the Contract Price and sending the Estimated costs to the Job Costing Budget, review the following:
Estimate Overview
Job Costing
Job costing is the process of tracking, managing, and analyzing all costs associated with a specific project. It involves categorizing expenses such as labor, materials, equipment, subcontractor fees, and overhead to ensure accurate budgeting and financial control.
By breaking down costs at a detailed level, you can monitor project profitability, identify potential cost overruns, and make informed financial decisions. A strong job costing system helps construction businesses stay on budget, improve estimating accuracy for future projects, and maintain financial transparency.
Changes in Scope
When a change in scope arises, leveraging Buildertrend's Change Order feature provides a streamlined way to manage and document any adjustments to the original project plan. This tool allows you to create, track, and approve change orders directly within the platform, ensuring that all modifications are accurately reflected in your project’s financials and timeline.
For a step-by-step overview of creating change orders, review this article.
Job Costing Budget
Buildertrend's Job Costing Budget gives you a clear, detailed view of your project's financial status. It lets you compare your estimated costs, projected costs, and actual costs, along with other key financial details, so you can easily track where you stand and adjust as needed.
Buildertrend's Purchase Orders provide valuable insight into your project's future expenses. When you create and track purchase orders, the total amounts are automatically applied to the Committed Costs column in the Job Costing Budget, helping you monitor planned costs and better forecast your project’s financial commitments.
Buildertrend’s Bills offer a clear view of actual project expenses. As you enter and track bills, the amounts are automatically applied to the Actual Costs column in the Job Costing Budget, ensuring an accurate representation of what has been spent so far on your project.
Buildertrend’s Projected Cost Adjustments allows you to reflect anticipated expenses for bills that have not yet been received. By updating your Job Costing Budget with these projected costs, you can maintain an accurate financial picture of your project, even before being billed.
For a step-by-step overview of features mentioned, review the following Help Center Articles:
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