The Job Costing Budget in Buildertrend serves as a central hub for tracking and managing the financial performance of your projects. It provides a clear, real-time view of estimated costs, actual spend, projected costs, and more, helping you stay in control of your budget from start to finish.
By syncing with your estimate, purchase orders, bills, and other key financial data, the Job Costing Budget empowers you to make informed decisions, minimize financial surprises, and keep your projects on track and profitable.
Job Costing Budget Help Video
Job Costing Budget Setup
Start by confirming that your accounting method is set to your preferred approach. To do this, navigate to Bills/POs/Budget in your Company Settings.
Your selected accounting method will determine how Actual Costs are calculated in the Job Costing Budget, aligning with your current accounting process.
💡Pro Tip
If you're integrated with QuickBooks Online, you can use Sync from QuickBooks to ensure that the Job Costing Budget in Buildertrend aligns with your accounting method in QuickBooks.
Populating your Job Costing Budget
To start using the Job Costing Budget in Buildertrend, the first step is to populate it with your Original Budget Costs. These costs come directly from your project Estimate and serve as the financial foundation for the entire budget.
Clicking Send to Budget from the Estimate activates the Job Costing Budget. Until this action is taken, the budget will not be available and none of the related data, such as Revised Costs, Actuals, Committed Costs, or Pending Costs, will appear.
Sending your estimate to the budget creates a clear financial baseline and opens the door to full job costing functionality. This allows you to track performance, improve financial visibility, and keep your project aligned with your budget from the very beginning.
For details on creating your estimate, securing a signed proposal, and sending estimated costs to the Job Costing Budget, check out this article.
Exploring the Job Costing Budget
Once the Job Costing Budget is populated, you can begin tracking performance with greater financial visibility, helping keep your project aligned with its budget.
From high-level profitability insights to detailed cost tracking, the Job Costing Budget is designed to make important financial information easy to access and interpret.
Each part of the Job Costing Budget works together to give you a clear, real-time view of your project's financial health.
By understanding how this information is structured, you can identify trends, monitor overages, and make confident, informed decisions that keep your jobs profitable and on track.
Profitability Summary
The top of the Job Costing Budget features a high-level summary that gives you insight into your current job profitability based on the job's contract type.
Open Book Jobs – The summary will provide insight into:
your current Projected Total Costs by showcasing where you are with Actual Costs vs your Cost to Complete.
your Revised Client Price by showcasing your Amount Invoiced vs the total Left to Invoice.
Fixed Price Jobs – The summary will provide insight into your Projected Profit and Projected Profit Margin by showcasing your Projected Profit vs Estimated Profit.
Data Organization: Cost Code Related Items
Your financial data in the Job Costing Budget is organized by Cost Code, giving you a clear, structured view of how costs are distributed across your project. Each Cost Code groups related financial data, including original budget costs, actual costs, committed costs, and more, into a single, easy-to-read line item.
To further improve visibility and efficiency, you can click into any specific item within the budget to view its detailed information. This eliminates the need to navigate back and forth between different features, allowing you to monitor job costs and profitability in one place and with greater clarity.
💡Pro Tip
If you are integrated with QuickBooks, Expenses created in QuickBooks can be pulled in and displayed on the Job Costing Budget.
You can view the detailed information of the Expense by selecting the Expense from the Actual Costs column.
For more information on pulling in QuickBooks Expenses:
Review this article (for QuickBooks Online)
Review this article (for QuickBooks Desktop)
Personalizing the Job Costing Budget View
You can personalize the Job Costing Budget by selecting which columns are displayed, helping you focus on the data most relevant to your workflow. Whether you're tracking budgeted costs, actuals, pending items, or profit, customizing the view keeps your layout clear and purposeful.
Tailoring the columns simplifies budget reviews, removes unnecessary details, and gives you better control over your project’s financial performance.
To adjust your Job Costing Budget view, use the drop-down in the bottom right corner to select a pre-saved Buildertrend view or click the ellipsis to create your own custom view.
For steps on creating a custom view, review Add & Manage Grid Views.
Pre-Saved Views
Buildertrend offers four pre-saved Job Costing Budget views to give you quick access to different sets of financial data. These ready-to-use views make it easier to focus on the information that matters most, helping you review your budget more efficiently and make faster, informed decisions.
Job Costing – This view allows you to quickly isolate and review columns specific to job costing. The columns included in this view are:
Client Pricing – This view allows you to quickly isolate the receivables columns specific to client pricing. The columns included in this view are:
Profit View – This view allows you to evaluate columns specific to profit data and understand the resulting profit impact on the job. The columns included in this view are:
Standard View – This view combines both the Job Costing and Client Pricing views, providing a more detailed overview of your budget as it relates to both cost and pricing.
View the Job Costing Budget by Job Groups
Multi-family projects often track budgets at the job group level rather than by individual job, making it important to view financial data across multiple jobs within the same group.
By filtering your jobs list by a specific job group, you can view a combined Job Costing Budget that includes all jobs assigned to that group.
Job Costing Budget Columns
Each column in the Job Costing Budget provides specific insight into your project's financial health. Understanding what each column represents is key to interpreting your data accurately and making informed decisions.
Job Costing Columns
Original Budget Costs: Reflects your cost from the signed Proposal.
Revised Budget Costs: Tells you the impact of any scope changes to the job by adding approved Selections, and approved Change Orders totals to your Original Budget Costs.
Committed Costs: Includes approved Purchase Orders, approved Variance POs, and unapproved Time Clock shifts.
Actual Costs:
If Accrual accounting: Open or paid Bills, Variance Bills and approved Time Clock shifts.
If connected to QuickBooks, it will also include any bills or expenses entered directly into QuickBooks.
If Cash accounting: Paid Bills, Variance Bills and approved Time Clock shifts.
If connected to QuickBooks, it will also include any paid bills or expenses entered directly into QuickBooks.
Builder Variance: Collects Bills marked as Builder Variances; also counted as part of actuals. These are costs that you expect to cover.
This does not include Customer Variances.
Complete: When a cost is marked Complete, its Projected Costs will reset to equal Actual Costs.
Pending Costs: Includes released Purchase Orders that have not been approved.
Optionally, you can included created but not released Purchase Orders by enabling "Include unreleased purchase orders in pending costs of the job costing budget" within Company Settings > Bills / POs / Budget
Projected Costs: Will be the highest of the Revised Costs, Committed Costs, or the Actual Costs.
The Projected Costs field can be manually updated to account for cost fluctuations when supporting documents, such as a bill or purchase order, are not yet available.
For more information on this workflow, review Projected Costs Adjustments.
🆕 "Smarter" Projected Costs
With "Smarter" Projected Costs, the calculation will take the greatest of:
*Note: The updated "Smarter" Projected Costs experience is currently optional. You can turn it on using the banner at the top of your Job Costing Budget. This will eventually become the standard method Buildertrend uses to calculate Projected Costs.
Cost-to-Complete: Subtracts your Actual Costs from your Projected Costs to tell you how much you have left to spend for this cost code
Revised vs Projected: Subtracts your Projected Costs from your Revised Budget Costs to tell you how you are projecting to end based versus your original estimated pricing.
Client Pricing Columns
Original Client Price: Reflects the client price from the signed Proposal.
Revised Client Price:
If Fixed Price:
Client Price from the original proposal plus any Selections or approved Change Orders.
If Open Book:
Projected Costs - Builder Variance with job markup/margin applied.
If Complete, Actual Costs - Builder Variance, with job markup/margin applied.
For more information regarding Revised Client Price and how markup/margin is applied during the calculations, review this section!
Amount Invoiced: Same as the Amount Invoiced column in the original Budget; The total amount per cost code from released Client Invoices.
Remaining to Invoice: Portion of Revised Client Price remaining to be released to the client.
% Invoiced of Client Price: Percentage of the Revised Client Price for which Client Invoices have been released to the client.
Profit Columns
Projected Profit: Total amount of projected profit for this cost code. Revised Client Price minus Projected Cost and Applied Credit Memos.
Projected Margin: Total amount of projected profit for this cost code, expressed as percent of the total. Projected Profit divided by Revised Client Price.
Markup/Margin on Open Book vs Fixed Price jobs:
How Column Calculations Differ
When creating a job in Buildertrend, you have the ability to set your job's contract type - Open Book or Fixed Price.
The Contract Type chosen will effect how the Revised Client Price column on the Job Costing Budget calculates when taking markup/margin into consideration.
When Fixed Price is selected:
The Revised Client Price will be calculated by taking the Revised Budget Costs and then your Markup/Margin from the originating Estimate Line Items, Allowances, Selections, Bids, and Change Orders will be added to that total.
When Open Book is selected:
The Revised Client Price will be calculated by taking Projected Costs - Builder Variance and then your Markup/Margin from the originating Estimate Line Items, Allowances, Selections, Bids, and Change Orders will be added to that total.
Additional Open Book rules that the Job Costing Budget takes into account:
The markup/margin used to inform the Revised Client Price will differ depending on:
Matching Estimate Data: This is the first thing the budget takes into account
The markup/margin used in the Revised Client Price will be the same percentage used for the specific Cost Code and Cost Type combination on the Estimate.
No Estimate Data Match: These calculation is used if a matching Cost Code and Cost Type combination is used on the Estimate.
For Purchase Orders and Bills, the markup/margin assigned to the specific cost type will be applied.
Projected Cost Adjustments will utilize the Markup/Margin percentage assigned to the Other Cost Type.
If you include labor costs on the budget, your labor costs will be calculated by hours worked + employee labor rate and the Markup/Margin for the Labor Cost Type will be added to that total.
If integrated with QuickBooks AND if you have QuickBooks expenses pulled into the budget, the Markup/Margin percentage assigned to the Other Cost Type will be added to those totals.
For more detailed information on how to set up your default Markup/Margin settings in Buildertrend, review this article!
Projected Costs Adjustments
A critical aspect of tracking a job's financial health is handling cost fluctuations.
If you anticipate cost fluctuations but don’t yet have supporting documents like a bill or purchase order, you can manually add these changes as a Projected Cost Adjustment.
This allows you to plan ahead until the relevant documents are available by manually adjusting the Projected Costs column for any cost code that has an increase or decrease in it's projected value coming down the pipeline, updating the Cost to Complete column to present a more accurate financial forecast.
Creating a Cost Adjustment
Start by selecting the Projected Costs total for a specific cost code. In the modal, click +Adjustment, enter your manual cost adjustment with a note explaining the reason, then click Save.
Deleting a Cost Adjustment
If you added a cost adjustment for more accurate financial insights but later received the appropriate documentation, such as a bill or purchase order, be sure to remove the manual adjustment to avoid duplicate data and ensure accurate financial reporting.
Start by selecting the Projected Costs total for a specific cost code. In the modal, click the trashcan icon to remove a previously added cost adjustment.
Isolating Specific Costs
Accurately tracking job costs is essential for maintaining profitability, but manually searching for specific cost groups can be time-consuming and may slow down your ability to catch budget issues.
The Job Costing Budget’s filtering tools help solve this by allowing you to isolate specific costs, whether by related items like purchase orders or time entries, or by cost types such as labor or materials, so you can quickly focus on the data that matters most and take action with confidence.
Filtering by Related Items
Filtering by Related Items allows you to easily isolate key costs linked to items like bills, selections, time clock entries, and more. This focused view helps you quickly compare estimated and actual spending, identify potential overruns early, make budget adjustments, and improve accuracy when estimating future projects.
From the Job Costing Budget, select Filter.
Use the Related Items dropdown to select specific items and isolate the costs associated with them, the click Apply filter.
Filtering by Cost Types
By filtering by Cost Types, you can quickly isolate all costs associated with a specific cost type assigned on the Estimate, such as Labor, Material, Equipment, Subcontractor, Other, or None.
This focused view makes it easier to compare estimated vs. actual spend, identify overruns early, adjust budgets accordingly, and make smarter, cost-type-specific decisions for future estimates.
Please Note: Only jobs created in Buildertrend after June 12, 2024
will have the ability to Filter by Cost Types.
From the Job Costing Budget, select Filter.
Use the Cost Type dropdown to select specific cost types and isolate the costs associated with them, the click Apply filter.
Sharing the Job Costing Budget
The Job Costing Budget can be shared with your active client to access in their Customer Portal.
Navigate to the Client tab within the Job Settings to set your preference and choose the columns of information you wish to share.
Note: By default, Buildertrend does not share the Job Costing Budget to the Customer Portal.
Interested in Learning More? 📚
The Buildertrend Learning Academy is your one-stop-shop for your online education, whether you're new to Buildertrend or an experienced user looking to learn more.
If you have any questions or require additional support, feel free to chat with us, send an email: support@buildertrend.com, or give us a call at 1-888-415-7149. We’re always happy to help.
Last Updated: 8/13/25