Job Costing Budget Help Video

Populating Your Job Costing Budget

Exploring the Job Costing Budget

Personalizing the Job Costing Budget View

Use the dropdown in the bottom left corner to select a pre-saved Buildertrend view or create your own custom view using the ellipsis.

Buildertrend offers four pre-saved views:

• Standard View (Default)
• Job Costing
• Client Pricing 
• Profit View

Each view highlights different financial data to support efficient review and decision-making:

• Job Costing – This view allows you to quickly isolate and review columns specific to job costing. The columns included in this view are:

  

• Client Pricing – This view allows you to quickly isolate the receivables columns specific to client pricing. The columns included in this view are:

  

• Profit View – This view allows you to evaluate columns specific to profit data and understand the resulting profit impact on the job. The columns included in this view are:

  

• Standard View – This view combines both the Job Costing and Client Pricing views, providing a more detailed overview of your budget as it relates to both cost and pricing.

Multi-family projects often track budgets at the job group level rather than by individual job, making it important to view financial data across multiple jobs within the same group.

By filtering your jobs list by a specific job group, you can view a combined Job Costing Budget that includes all jobs assigned to that group.

Job Costing Budget Columns

Each column in the Job Costing Budget represents a specific part of your project's financial performance. 

Job Costing Columns

• Original Budget Costs: Reflects costs from the signed Proposal.
• Revised Budget Costs: Includes approved Selections, and approved Change Orders totals to your Original Budget Costs.
• Pending Costs: Includes all unapproved Purchase Orders, both released and unreleased. 
• Committed Costs: Includes approved Purchase Orders, approved Variance POs, and unapproved Time Clock shifts.
• Actual Costs:
  • If Accrual accounting:
    • Includes open or paid Bills, Variance Bills and approved Time Clock shifts.
    • If connected to QuickBooks, it will also include any bills or expenses entered directly into QuickBooks.
• If Cash accounting:
  • • Includes paid Bills, Variance Bills and approved Time Clock shifts.
    • If connected to QuickBooks, it will also include any paid bills or expenses entered directly into QuickBooks.
• Builder Variance: Includes Bills marked as Builder Variances. These are costs you expect to cover and are included in Actual Costs. 
  • This does not include Customer Variances.

Forecasting Columns

• Projection Reference: Determines which cost basis is used to calculate Projected Costs at the cost-code level. By default, Buildertrend selects the highest calculated total to maintain a conservative forecast. You may manually select a different reference from the dropdown when appropriate to surface savings earlier and improve forecasting accuracy. 
  • ✏️Note: Any changes to the Projection Reference field in the Job Costing Budget will affect how Projected Costs are calculated in the Work-In-Progress Report.

• Projected Costs: Represents the highest of the Revised Costs, Committed Costs, or the Actual Costs for each cost code. Projected Costs are calculated using the greatest of:

  • Revised Budget Costs + Builder Variance
  • Committed Costs
  • Actual Costs

This conservative logic helps prevent understating projected spend and improves visibility into the true financial position of your project. By default, Projected Costs use the highest calculated total unless a different Projection Reference is selected. The Projected Costs field may be manually updated when supporting documentation is not yet available. 

• Cost-to-Complete: Subtracts Actual Costs from Projected Costs to indicate how much remains to be spent for the cost code. 
• Revised vs Projected: Subtracts Projected Costs from your Revised Budget Costs to indicate projected overage or savings compared to the revised estimate.

Client Pricing Columns

• Original Client Price: Reflects the client price from the signed Proposal.
• Revised Client Price:
  • If Fixed Price: 

    • Original Client Price + any Selections or approved Change Orders.

• • If Open Book:

• Projected Costs – Builder Variance with job markup/margin applied.
• If Complete, Actual Costs – Builder Variance, with job markup/margin applied.
• Amount Invoiced: Total amount from released Client Invoices.
• Remaining to Invoice: Portion of Revised Client Price remaining to be released to the client.
• % Invoiced of Client Price: Percentage of the Revised Client Price that has been invoiced. 

• Projected Profit: Total amount of projected profit for this cost code. Revised Client Price – Projected Cost and Applied Credit Memos.
• Projected Margin: Total amount of projected profit for this cost code, expressed as percent of the total. Projected Profit ÷ by Revised Client Price.

Markup/Margin on Open Book vs Fixed Price Jobs: 

The contract type selected on the job determines how Revised Client Price is calculated. 

When Fixed Price is selected:

• The Revised Client Price is calculated by taking Revised Budget Costs and applying the Markup/Margin from the originating Estimate Line Items, Allowances, Selections, Bids, and Change Orders. 

When Open Book is selected:

• The Revised Client Price is calculated by taking Projected Costs – Builder Variance, then applying the Markup/Margin from the originating Estimate Line Items, Allowances, Selections, Bids, and Change Orders.

For more detailed information on how to set up your default Markup/Margin settings in Buildertrend, review this article!

Projected Reference vs Projected Cost Adjustments

Projection Reference determines which calculation is used to build Projected Costs for each cost code. 

Projected Cost Adjustments (PCAs) remain available but should now be used only when temporarily adjusting projected costs for a known future change that is not yet reflected by a bill or purchase order.

Use a PCA when:

• A cost will change but no bill or PO exists yet.
• You need to temporarily account for a future cost not reflected in Revised, Committed, or Actual Costs. 

Do NOT use a PCA when:

• You are trying to show savings or lock in a lower cost basis.
  • Use Projection Reference instead
• You are avoiding entering a bill or purchase order.

PCAs are temporary and require manual reconciliation.

If you anticipate cost fluctuations but do not yet have supporting documentation (such as a bill or purchase order), you may manually add a Projected Cost Adjustment. 

Deleting a Cost Adjustment

Filtering and Sharing 

Filtering by Related Items

Filtering by Cost Types

Sharing the Job Costing Budget

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