See the job going sideways in week three, not at year end.

Your company's cost categories live in Settings. They start as Labour, Materials, Subcontractors, Equipment, Permits & Fees, Site Costs, Overheads and Contingency. Rename them once and every new job uses your names. Renaming does not rewrite jobs already running or closed.

When a client signs a proposal, the job's budget is built from the estimate's sections. You can also copy a budget from another job, scaled up or down by a percentage.

You can log a cost by hand against a line, with the date, how it was paid and a reference. Field users can log what they spent on the job from their phone, and see none of the budget's totals.

Most cost arrives without retyping. A sub-trade payment logged on the job posts to the budget, and editing or deleting it moves the budget with it. The payment counts at its full amount, holdback included. An approved supplier bill posts each of its lines to the budget line it is coded to (Growth and Enterprise, with purchasing). Approved hours post at the worker's hourly rate, and unapproving them takes the cost back off (Growth and Enterprise, with time tracking).

If you are registered for GST/HST, say so in Settings, and the GST or HST you claim back on purchases is not counted as a cost of the job. PST and RST stay in the cost, because you do not get them back.

On Growth and Enterprise, committed cost is the money already promised and not yet spent: open purchase orders, and each subcontract's value less what that sub has been paid. It is worked out sub by sub, so a framer paid in full cannot hide the electrician's contract that has not been paid at all.

Committed cost is the gap between a job that reads on track and one that is. $340,000 of signed subcontracts against a $400,000 budget with $90,000 spent is not a job with $310,000 to spare.

Each budget line shows estimated, spent, committed and remaining. Remaining is estimated less spent less committed, and a negative number means the line is already over.

While the job runs, the projected final cost of each line is the larger of its estimate and what is spent plus committed. Money not yet spent on a line is assumed to be spent, so no line is forecast to come in under budget until it actually has. Ridgepole does not forecast from percent complete, because materials and sub-trade deposits are paid up front: a job 20 percent through can have spent 45 percent of its budget and be exactly on track. When the job is complete, the final cost is what it actually cost.

The Estimated vs Actual report puts every job side by side, with each job's projected margin and a drill-down to its lines. Sort by lowest projected margin to see which job needs you this week. The budget variance for a job prints as a PDF.

Budgets, costs and margins are for owners, admins and project managers. Field users and clients never see them.

With QuickBooks Online connected, every supplier bill, bill payment and sub-trade payment is entered under the job it belongs to, and each budget category lands on the expense account you chose for it: Labour, Materials, Subcontractors, Equipment and the rest. Your bookkeeper sees the job's costs by job, from the same documents your budget was built from.