Question Doing Profit/Loss sheet on every job?

[Daniel_SoDak]

Just curious if any other Business Owners require info on every job for Profit/Loss. I can see this on very large ticket jobs, smaller jobs (banners, ....) it doesn't make sense. This is done on every job year after year.

Any thoughts?

 

[unclebun]

I could perhaps see an accounting of expenses vs income on the job if it's not a run of the mill job like a coroplast 18x24 for sale sign. For example, if you are building sign cabinets, wiring them, and installing them, an accounting of raw material used and wasted, installation supplies used, and so on can keep the owner apprised for purposes of setting prices, preventing waste, and so on.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Depends on your workload and job types. We average about 20k-25k jobs a year so doing a profit/loss on every job wouldn’t be fun.

It obviously makes massive sense to know how much everything costs for offering bulk prices etc but for every job just sounds like you’re giving yourself extra work for no reason.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I keep a simple record of P&L on every job I do.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

We record every labor hour, materials used and code the labor on just about every job. Most are $1k+, little cash stuff slides. We don't track consumables used but do add 2% to the total to cover them.

 

[Reveal1]

We're small so use a self-developed spreadsheet to quote and job cost every job except banners, coro signs and small qty. labels. Those have a price list for quick quotes.

Takes about 2-3 minutes for most print, print cut and vinyl applied to substrate. Well worth it. Complex jobs a little longer but higher risk to lose $ or orders if you don't. We capture an overhead charge, labor, prep, art, material, install rate, ink, laminator setup, cutter setup, you name it. Can't understand how a business can thrive not knowing true costs or pricing them into a job. I guess winging it works for some, but I'll bet they either leave money on table or lose biz as a result of not knowing how to price a job.

 

[Stacey K]

One woman shop here. I have a paper form for each job. I don't always fill it out for small jobs but for most I do. It has PO numbers, vinyl colors, time spent, etc. so I just take a pic and save in OneDrive when I'm done. Since the small jobs are time suckers, they are almost more important to track than larger ones sometimes!

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

I used to do this but stopped. Need to start doing it again since I moved to a bigger/more expensive shop to reevaluate my costs etc

 

[Jeremiah]

Just curious if any other Business Owners require info on every job for Profit/Loss. I can see this on very large ticket jobs, smaller jobs (banners, ....) it doesn't make sense. This is done on every job year after year.

Any thoughts?

Are you the owner or are you getting an opinion of what your boss is doing ?

 

[Pauly]

Not for each job - no.
What we do is I've build a pretty robust quoting calculator that factors in all our consumables, etc All you need to do to is enter the job size. qty. and media and it'll give you a price per sheet & est print time.
It also tells me the profit per job, and consumable cost and media cost.

From that calculator we build products, and we quote from our product prices.