Construction Job Costing Spreadsheet, Excel Google Sheets, Builder True Labour Rate and Committed Cost, Job Profit (Digital Download)

CONSTRUCTION JOB COSTING SPREADSHEET — Excel and Google Sheets, with a worked half-year inside

A carpenter on $24.50 an hour does not cost you $24.50 an hour.

Add the employer's tax, the pension and the liability cover and his wage bill is $62,171, not $50,960. He is paid 2,080 hours a year and 224 of them are holiday. Of what is left, roughly fifteen per cent is travel, loading, yard time and standing in the rain — paid, and never on anybody's job sheet. That leaves 1,578 hours you can actually sell.

$62,171 over 1,578 hours is $39.41 an hour. Sixty per cent above the headline rate, before a penny of overhead.

Price a job at the wage and a twenty per cent margin and your twenty per cent is roughly nothing. This is the single most common reason a builder can be busy all year and not know where the money went.

THIS FILE FIXES TWO THINGS, AND THEY ARE THE TWO THAT COST YOU

1. THE TRUE COST OF A PRODUCTIVE HOUR
Type each person's wage, hours and holiday. The Team and Rates tab works out the hours that are actually sellable after holiday and non-productive time, adds your on-costs, and puts one number in one column: true cost an hour. Every estimate in the workbook prices labour at that number. Give somebody a pay rise and every open estimate reprices itself.

2. THE INVOICE THAT HAS NOT ARRIVED YET
You order $9,000 of timber on the second. It is delivered, it is used, the job carries on. The supplier statement turns up five weeks later. For those five weeks an ordinary job sheet says the job is $9,000 better off than it is — and you price the next one from a profit that was never there.

So the Costs tab has two money columns, not one. COMMITTED is what you have ordered, entered the day you order it. INVOICED is what has actually reached a statement. The gap between them is money the job has spent and not been told about.

Job Profit then shows both answers side by side. The column headed "If you only counted invoices" is what an ordinary spreadsheet would have told you. The column next to it is the truth. In the worked example the new build reads $21,671 the ordinary way and $4,341 the honest way — same day, same data, five times over.

THE TEN TABS

Setup — six numbers: payroll on-costs, paid holiday, the share of paid hours that never reaches a job, weeks paid a year, overhead recovery per hour, target margin. Everything downstream is built from these.
Team and Rates — 20 people. Wage in, true cost of a productive hour out, with the working shown in between.
Jobs — 30 jobs. Estimate labour in HOURS, not money; the file prices them and adds overhead recovery.
Timesheets — 700 rows. Productive, travel, yard and loading, weather and standby, training, holiday. The unbillable ones are the point.
Costs — 500 lines. Committed and invoiced in separate columns, category, supplier, reference and what is still to come.
Variations — 80 extras with a status. Only the ones marked Agreed count towards the contract; the Proposed ones sit in plain sight showing what you are carrying unpaid.
Invoices and Retention — 100 invoices, days outstanding, overdue flags, and the retention held with the date it is due back.
Job Profit — nothing typed. Revenue earned, cost by type, ordered-not-invoiced, true cost, TRUE PROFIT, true margin, and how far it has drifted from the margin you quoted.
Dashboard — five charts and the month-by-month table behind them.
Start Here — the guide, inside the workbook as well as in the PDF.

RETENTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY YET
Five per cent held for a year shows in your profit and not in your bank, and the gap between those two facts is where builders who are busy go under. The file holds it separately and works out the date it is released.

OVERHEAD, SPREAD THE HONEST WAY
Van, insurance, office, phone, software, accountant and your own unbilled hours. Add them up for a year, divide by the productive hours you expect to sell, and put the answer on Setup. A job that takes twice as long carries twice the overhead — which is exactly what happens in real life.

THE EXAMPLE WAS NOT TYPED BY HAND
There is a real-looking small builder in the file: Kestrel Building Ltd, six on the payroll, eight jobs — four finished, four still on site — four hundred and forty-eight timesheet lines and every order behind them. Nothing is blank, so you can watch every column behave before you touch it.

None of it was invented. The half-year was generated week by week from each job's own estimate, which is why one of the eight was quoted at twelve per cent and delivered nothing at all, and why the live jobs look better on invoices than they are.

TWO COPIES IN THE DOWNLOAD
One workbook has the half-year filled in, so you can see what every column expects before you touch anything. The second is the same file completely blank: same ten tabs, same formulas, same charts, categories still there, ready for your first job. Start on whichever suits you.

WORKS WITH
Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer, Windows or Mac. Google Sheets — upload and open with Sheets; every formula works, the dropdowns look a little different, the print settings do not carry across. LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no login.

HONEST LIMITS — please read before buying
- It is not accounting software. No VAT or sales tax return, no CIS or subcontractor deductions, no payroll run, no bank feed. It costs jobs; it does not file anything.
- Overhead recovery is a rate you choose. The file spreads whatever you put in; it cannot know your real overheads for you.
- Per cent complete is your judgement. Everything mid-job depends on it and the file cannot guess it.
- It is built for a firm running two to twenty people, not for main contractors on valuations and applications for payment.
- One business per file. Two companies means two copies.
- It does not read your computer's clock. Every "so far" number counts from one date on the Setup tab. That is deliberate: a file that changes under you every morning is a file you stop trusting.
- Capacity: 20 people, 30 jobs, 700 timesheet rows, 500 cost lines, 80 variations, 100 invoices, 12 months.

WHAT ARRIVES
Two .xlsx workbooks and a plain-English Start Here guide as a PDF. Instant download — no app, no login, no monthly fee.

I never ask for shop access. No password, no manager invite, no app permissions. You download a file; that is the whole transaction.

Licence: for your own business. Reselling or redistributing the file is not allowed.

Something wrong with it? Message me through Etsy and I will fix the file.