STRONG YEAR. WHERE DID THE MARGIN GO?
For the owner whose revenue is up and whose margin is still a guess.
This part was never part of the training.
Trade school teaches pipe. It does not teach job costing, and it does not teach the difference between a busy month and a profitable one. Most owners in this trade learn the money side the expensive way.
So revenue climbs, the trucks stay out, and you still cannot look at a closed month and name the work worth repeating or the work you should have declined.
WHAT CHANGES.
- Customer records stay current in FieldMetrx™ and QuickBooks, both directions
- The approved proposal becomes the invoice, so no one rebuilds it in a second window
- Payments post against the correct job and the correct customer
- Refunds and credits carry across, so the two systems stay reconciled
- The job number is the key, so any figure in your books traces back to the work behind it
BUSY IS NOT THE SAME AS PROFITABLE.
A truck can run flat out for twelve months and still finish the year with little to show for it. That happens to capable operators, and it is not a reflection of your work in the field.
It happens because the money side and the job side live in separate systems, and nothing is connecting the two.
QuickBooks records what came in. It does not record which job produced it, who ran that job, or how long the truck sat in the driveway. The month closes on a number with no story behind it.
Estimating is manageable at one truck. It becomes costly at three.
ONE ENTRY. THAT IS THE ENTIRE MECHANISM.
The job closes in the driveway with the work, the parts, and the agreed price already on it. That same record is what reaches your books.
Not retyped on a Friday night. Not reconstructed in a second window by someone who was never on site. The same record.
Four things move, both directions:
That is not a minor gain. That is your Friday night back.
THE SAME REVENUE, BROKEN DOWN BY THE WORK BEHIND IT.
Your books tell you what came in. Once the job record and the ledger share a job number, you can also see which work produced it and where the hours went. These are the views a FieldMetrx™ owner dashboard reports on.
- Gross margin62.3%
- Labor cost21.4%
- Material cost16.3%
| Trenchless lining | 62.5% | Revenue $3.2k · material $620 · labor $580 across 15.3 booked hours. |
|---|---|---|
| Spot repair | 62.1% | Lowest margin job in the period: Delvecchio Residence. |
| Camera inspection | 55.4% | Short duration work, material light, margin carried by labor rate. |
| Jetting | 50.6% | Matches the company gross margin line on the dashboard. |
| Cabling / drain clear | 38.2% | High volume, low ticket. The work that funds the calendar, not the year. |
| Gross margin | 62.3% | Average margin across completed jobs in the period. |
| Labor cost | 21.4% | $1.6k over 30 days, auto derived from job time plus manual entries. |
| Material cost | 16.3% | $1.1k spend against $10 of variance to estimate. |
Figures shown are a sample month from a three truck configuration. Your own numbers replace them once the price book and job history are loaded.
THREE THINGS THIS DOES NOT DO.
Better to know now than to discover it in month two.
Labor lands on the job so the job can be costed. Payroll stays wherever you run it today. We do not claim to replace it.
Material cost comes from your price book and from what the tech records on the job. If you need actual cost pulled from supplier invoices, raise it on the call and we will tell you plainly whether this is the right fit.
Your books remain your books. Your accountant closes the year the same way, with the job detail behind the numbers finally available.
We would rather define the scope accurately than sell a list that falls apart under use.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS ON THE INTEGRATION.
No. QuickBooks stays exactly where it is, doing exactly what it does today.
The proposal your customer approves becomes the invoice, and it posts to QuickBooks from there. You are not building the same invoice twice.
No. Your accountant gets better job detail than before, and nothing about how your year gets closed changes.
QuickBooks Online. If you run Desktop, raise it on the call and we will give you a straight answer on where that stands rather than inventing a date.