Free construction job costing spreadsheet template

Download the template

Download the job costing template (Excel, .xlsx). No sign-up and no email. It opens in Excel and in Google Sheets: in Google Drive choose New, then File upload, then open the file with Google Sheets.

Seven working tabs, one job per file:

• Job Setup — contract value, retainage, and your labor burden: payroll taxes, workers’ comp and benefits.
• Budget — one row per cost code. Original budget, approved change orders, revised budget, open commitments, actual cost, projected final cost, and over or under budget, all calculated.
• Labor — hours by date, worker and cost code, with each worker’s base pay rate. The loaded rate and labor cost calculate.
• Costs — every bill, receipt and sub invoice, against a cost code and, if there is one, a PO or subcontract number.
• Commitments — purchase orders and subcontracts, with billed to date pulled from the Costs tab and what is still open.
• Change Orders — cost and price for each change. Only approved ones move the budget and the contract.
• WIP — percent complete, earned revenue, and whether the job is over- or under-billed.

Blue text is what you type. Black text is a formula. Yellow cells are settings to check for your own business before you start.

Setting it up for a job

• Start from your estimate. Put each cost code and its budget on the Budget tab. Keep the codes short — 100, 110, 200 — because you will type them on every time sheet and bill.
• Set your labor burden on Job Setup before you log any hours. The federal payroll taxes are filled in; state unemployment and workers’ comp are yours to set.
• Log purchase orders and subcontracts on the Commitments tab the day you sign them, not the day the bill arrives.
• Log hours at least weekly. On most trade jobs the labor line is where an overrun shows first.
• When a bill comes in, put its PO or subcontract number on it, so it draws down the commitment instead of counting twice.
• Update billed to date on the WIP tab every time you send a pay application or invoice.

Getting labor cost right: the burden

The rate on a worker’s pay stub is not what an hour of their time costs you. On top of it you pay the employer’s share of Social Security, 6.2%, and of Medicare, 1.45%. IRS Topic 751

Federal unemployment (FUTA) is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages for the year, and 0.6% if you get the full 5.4% credit for paying your state unemployment tax. The template applies 0.6% to every hour, which slightly overstates it once a worker passes $7,000 for the year. IRS Topic 759

State unemployment and workers’ comp depend on your state, your trade and your claims history, so the template leaves them as settings. The sample uses 2.7% and 8.0% as placeholders only. Workers’ comp is usually quoted as a rate per $100 of payroll: divide it by 100 to get the percentage the template wants.

On the sample settings, a worker paid $34.00 an hour costs $40.44 an hour. Across a crew and a whole job, that gap decides whether a job that looks profitable actually is.

Reading the WIP tab

The WIP tab uses the cost-to-cost method: percent complete is cost to date divided by projected final cost. Multiply that by the revised contract and you have earned revenue. Then compare earned revenue with what you have billed.

Billed more than you have earned, and the job is over-billed: you are holding the customer’s money, and the cost to finish still has to be paid. Billed less, and it is under-billed: you are financing the job. Contractor Foreman’s own explanation of its WIP report makes the point that bonding companies and banks look at exactly this, to check a contractor is not using one job’s money to fund another. Contractor Foreman help: WIP report

The sample job has billed $52,000 against about $33,500 of earned revenue, so it is over-billed by about $18,500. That can happen early on a job when billing runs ahead of the work. It is the number to watch as the job goes on.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet works for one job, or a few, kept up to date by one person. These are the signs it has stopped working:

• Somebody retypes time sheets into it every week, and it is always a week behind.
• More than one person edits it, and nobody is sure which copy is current.
• Bills get entered twice, once here and once in the books, and the two never quite agree.
• You want to see every job at once, and that means opening a file per job.
• Your bonding agent or bank asks for a WIP schedule across all your jobs, and it takes a day to build.

At that point job costing software is worth pricing up. We compared six tools, WorkHoist included, in the best job costing software for contractors.

Where WorkHoist helps, and where it does not

WorkHoist does the parts of this template that are slowest by hand. The budget is built from the estimate, approved change orders revise it, approved purchase orders count as committed cost automatically, and the WIP schedule works out over- and under-billing for every active job at once, on every plan. Bank statements import as CSV, OFX or QFX and are matched against costs already entered.

Questions contractors ask

Is there a free job costing template for construction?

Yes. WorkHoist’s construction job costing template is a free Excel file, with no sign-up or email required, that also opens in Google Sheets. For one job, it tracks the budget by cost code, loaded labor cost from hours, purchase orders and subcontracts, change orders, and a WIP calculation of over- and under-billing.

How do I create a construction cost sheet in Excel?

Start with one row per cost code from your estimate, with the budget for each. Add separate tabs for labor hours, bills and receipts, purchase orders and subcontracts, and change orders, each tagged with a cost code. Then use SUMIFS on the budget tab to total actual cost and open commitments by cost code, and compare the projected final cost — the larger of the revised budget, or actual cost plus open commitments — with the revised budget.

Can I use Excel to estimate construction costs?

Yes, and many contractors do. This template is for tracking cost once the job is won rather than for estimating, but its Budget tab takes the cost codes and amounts straight from your estimate, so the two line up.

What is labor burden in construction?

Labor burden is what an hour of work costs you on top of the base pay rate: the employer’s 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare, federal and state unemployment tax, workers’ comp and benefits. Federal unemployment is 0.6% after the maximum state credit, on the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages. State unemployment and workers’ comp vary by state, trade and employer.

What does over-billed mean on a WIP report?

A job is over-billed when you have billed more than you have earned, where earned revenue is percent complete times the contract value. Under-billed is the reverse: work done that has not been billed yet. Bonding companies and banks look at both to check that a contractor is not using one job’s money to fund another.

When should a contractor stop using a spreadsheet for job costing?

When the spreadsheet is always behind: time sheets retyped every week, more than one person editing it, bills entered twice, or a WIP schedule across all jobs that takes a day to build. At that point job costing software that turns time into labor cost and connects to your accounting is worth pricing up.