Quoting and job costing software for carpenters

What to track on every carpentry job

Carpentry jobs run for days or weeks, so the profit is decided by labour hours and timber more than anything else. Track these against the job as they happen:

• Crew hours by day: who was on site, for how long, and what they did (set-out, frame, roof, fix, fit-off)
• Timber and sheet goods: at today's supplier price, with the waste and offcuts the job really made
• Fixings and consumables: screws, nails, brackets, adhesive and blades add up across a long job
• Hire: scaffold, props, a post-hole borer, a mini loader
• Tip fees and disposal: demolition waste, offcuts and packaging
• Variations: every change the client asks for, priced in writing before you do it

Why carpentry quotes go wrong

Three things catch carpentry quotes out. Timber prices move between the quote and the order, so a quote that sat for two months is priced on old numbers. Labour gets estimated from the best day you ever had, not the average one. And small extras turn up on site and get done as a favour.

TrackYaTradie gives each one a place: a price list you keep current, hours logged per day against what you quoted, and variations sent from site for the client to approve. Quotes carry a validity period, 30 days unless you change it, and the client's quote page shows when it has expired. If a client comes back after that, re-check the timber before you confirm.

A worked example: a pergola, tracked by the day

Here is a flat-roof pergola of about 4 by 4 metres, priced and then tracked. The numbers are illustrative, and the hourly cost is the carpenter example on the tradie hourly rate calculator: about $93 an hour once wages, super, overheads and the ute are counted.

The footings hit rock and the frame goes up slower than planned. By the end of day three the crew has logged 37 hours and the roof is not on: the job card shows costs at 77% of the price with the roof sheets still to fix. The profit-at-risk alert fires once the hours pass about 45, and the pergola finishes at 52.

Two things come out of it. If the quote excluded excavation in rock, the extra footing time is a variation, priced and sent the day you hit it. And the next pergola gets quoted at what this one really took: update the job template to 52 hours, not 40, so the next quote starts from the truth. How to quote a carpentry job walks through the full method with a deck priced line by line.

Stage payments on longer builds

On renos and frames, set payment stages as percentages of the price, such as deposit, frame, lock-up and completion, and claim each one as the crew reaches it. The job shows what has been paid and what is owing beside the costs so far. Deposit limits for home building work differ between states, and progress claims and payment stages lists them.

New accounts set up for carpentry or building start with six job templates (a timber deck, a pergola, wall framing, roof framing, a kitchen fit-off, and a granny flat frame and lock-up) and a starter price list of common timber, sheet goods and fixings. Every price in them is a placeholder to check against your supplier before you quote.

What TrackYaTradie does not do for carpenters

• No take-offs from plans or drawings. You measure, then enter the quantities.
• No supplier price feeds. Your price list is yours to keep current.
• No stock, purchase orders or gantt chart. The calendar rosters the crew by the day.
• Xero only: there is no MYOB or QuickBooks sync.

It is built to answer one question while the job is running: is this job still making money?