See your real profit per job — not just the gross.
Built for trades, auto, and contractor shops working hard but watching margins disappear. Most owners look at a 18% gross margin on the P&L and think they're fine — then the spreadsheet shows 3 of every 10 jobs are actually losing money once you allocate truck cost, insurance, and admin time. This shows you which ones, and why.
What's inside the spreadsheet
- Per-job summary tab — one row per job with revenue, true cost, margin dollars, margin percent, and a red/yellow/green flag column
- Labor entry tab with a built-in burden rate calculator that loads payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, PTO, and non-billable time onto your hourly cost (most owners are 35-55% under what they think)
- Materials tab with separate fields for cost, markup percent, and final billed amount, so you can see margin on parts independent of labor
- Overhead allocation with four methods to choose from — flat rate per job, percent of revenue, percent of direct labor, and per-billable-hour — pick the one that matches how your shop actually works
- Margin auto-calc that subtracts labor, materials, sub costs, and allocated overhead from job revenue and shows you net profit per job in real dollars
- Dashboard tab with visualizations — margin distribution, revenue by job type, top 10 most profitable jobs, bottom 10 least profitable jobs, and a labor-burden-impact chart
- Multi-job comparison tab to stack 10 jobs side by side with the same crew or job type, so you can see why one painted $8K bathroom made $1,800 and the next one made $200
- 12-month rolling profitability tab that tracks margin trend over the last year so you catch the slow drift before it becomes a cash crisis
- Monthly summary tab that totals revenue, cost, gross margin, net margin, and average margin per job — drop it straight into a meeting with your CPA or partner
- Training tab with a fully worked example (an $8,000 paint job, line by line) plus a 5-minute setup walkthrough, formula key, and a Google Sheets and Excel version of every tab
Who this is for
- Trades shops doing $250K to $5M a year — plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roofing, painting, drywall, flooring, landscaping — where every job is a little different and you've stopped trusting the gut
- Auto and body shops, mobile mechanics, and detail crews trying to figure out which service tickets actually pay and which ones are eating their lunch
- Fleet operators and dispatch-based service businesses where truck cost, fuel, and route inefficiency hide inside an otherwise healthy gross margin
- Custom fab, install crews, and remodelers running fixed-bid work where labor overruns and material markups can flip a job from profit to loss in 4 hours
- Owners who get a clean monthly P&L from their CPA but can't tell which job, crew, or customer type is making the money — because the P&L only shows totals, not job-by-job reality
Worked example
An $8,000 exterior paint job looks like a winner — until you load the real burden rate on your two crew members, allocate the truck and insurance for 3 days on site, and add 4 hours of admin time on the back end. Run it through the sheet and the actual margin is $1,800, not the $3,200 you bid against. Same sheet shows you the next job priced $300 higher would have netted you $2,400 — that's the gap most owners don't see until tax time.
FAQ
Do I need accounting knowledge?+
No. If you can fill in a price, an hours figure, and a material cost, you can run this sheet. Every formula is built and locked, every input cell is highlighted yellow, and the training tab walks through one full job line by line. Most owners are running their first real job in under 30 minutes. The point of the sheet is to put accounting-grade numbers in front of someone who runs a shop, not to make you learn accounting.
Will this work with my CPA's monthly numbers?+
Yes — and it actually fills the gap your CPA can't. Your CPA gives you a P&L by month showing total revenue, total cost, total margin. That tells you the shop is healthy or hurting, but not which jobs are pulling weight. This sheet sits between the field and the P&L, so the monthly totals on the dashboard tab should reconcile to your CPA's numbers within a few percent. Most owners run it parallel for 90 days and then bring it to their next CPA meeting.
QuickBooks integration?+
Not direct. The sheet is intentionally standalone so you own the data and don't pay a monthly fee to read it. That said, the column structure matches QuickBooks Job Costing exports — you can paste a QBO job report into the input tab and the formulas will pick it up. If you're on QuickBooks Online and want a deeper integration, we build that as part of a custom finance system — start with the sheet first, then we'll talk if you need more.
Can I track multiple crews?+
Yes. The labor tab has a crew or technician column, and the dashboard breaks down margin by crew so you can see which team is actually profitable. We've had owners realize their highest-revenue crew was their lowest-margin crew because of a slow lead tech and a high callback rate — the sheet surfaces that in one chart. Works for up to about 8 crews before you'd want a real CRM.
Updates?+
Free updates for life on this version. We push small fixes and new tabs every few months — better visualizations, new overhead methods, sample templates for new trades. You'll get an email when there's a new version with a fresh download link. If we ever release a major v2 with new features, current owners get a discount, not a new full price.
Multi-currency?+
The sheet ships in USD by default. Currency is just a cell format — you can switch the entire sheet to CAD, MXN, or any currency by changing the format on the input cells. The formulas don't care about currency. We've had Canadian and Mexican shops running it without issue. Tax handling is generic, so a Canadian operator using GST/PST or a Mexican shop using IVA would adjust the tax row to match local rules.
Often bought together
Subcontractor Agreement
Clean subcontractor contract with scope, payment, and liability clauses. Pairs with the costing sheet so subbed-out work is locked in before it eats your margin.
See detailsService Agreement
General-purpose service agreement for client engagements. Locks in scope and change-order rules so the math in the costing sheet still holds at the end of the job.
See detailsEmployee Handbook
WA-aware handbook for service teams. The PTO and burden assumptions in the costing sheet only hold up if your crew rules are written down somewhere.
See detailsStop guessing your margins.
Pricing is being finalized — get on the list and we'll let you know the moment it launches. Run your last 10 jobs through it and you'll know within an hour where the money is actually coming from — and where it's leaking. If you'd rather have us help you wire the data into a real finance system, that's what /services/business-structuring is for.
These are templates — not financial, tax, or accounting advice. Numbers should be reviewed with a licensed CPA or financial advisor before any business decision. Cornerstone Intelligence Co. is not an accounting firm.