- Sage 300 CRE keys job cost by job, cost code and category — exactly what a forecast needs.
- Category codes differ by company; map them before comparing.
- Spreadsheet WIP is monthly, fragile and usually leaves out committed cost.
- Read the data directly and the WIP and forecasts can update weekly.
How Sage 300 CRE shapes job cost
Job cost in Sage 300 CRE is keyed by job (and optionally an extra, for phases or change orders), cost code and category — labor, material, subcontract, equipment and other, with each company free to define its own category codes. Budgets, actuals and commitments all hang off that key, which is exactly what a forecast needs.
| You want | It lives in |
|---|---|
| Budget and revised budget by cost code | Job Cost — estimates and approved changes |
| Actual cost to date | Job Cost transactions (from AP, payroll, equipment and journal entries) |
| Committed cost | Commitments — subcontracts and purchase orders, with what has been invoiced against each |
| Billed to date and retainage | Billing / accounts receivable |
| Labor hours | Payroll, costed to job, cost code and category |
One trap: category codes differ between companies on the same server. A report that hard-codes “L” for labor is wrong for the company that uses “LAB”. Map categories per company before comparing anything across them.
The usual reporting routes
- Standard reports. Good for the ledger view — cost by code, commitments, aging. They show what has posted, not where a job will finish.
- Report designer and Crystal Reports. Flexible, but each custom report is a small software project, usually understood by one person.
- Excel through the ODBC driver. The most common route for WIP and forecasts: queries pull cost, commitments and billing into a workbook where formulas do the rest. Fast to start, fragile to keep.
- An intelligence layer. Reads the same tables read-only, maps them to one model and forecasts every job continuously — see below.
Reading the live company files through the ODBC driver works for one report at a time; for dashboards and weekly forecasts, copy the data into SQL first — the reporting database setup guide walks through the copy, a read-only login and the checks to run after each load.
Where the spreadsheet route breaks
- It is monthly. The workbook is rebuilt at close, so an overrun that starts in week two is seen in week six.
- Percent complete comes from cost. Cost to date ÷ budget makes every job look on budget by definition — see job cost forecasting.
- Committed cost is left out. Subcontracts awarded but not yet invoiced are cost you already owe.
- Multi-company is manual. Each company database is queried and pasted separately.
- It lives with one person. When they are on holiday, so is the WIP.
Getting weekly answers from the data you have
Everything a weekly forecast needs is already in Sage 300 CRE. Read it directly and the WIP, the forecast at completion and the jobs trending over become views that update as cost posts, rather than a month-end project. That is what Constructelligence does: a read-only connection to Sage 300 CRE (live today), every company on the server discovered and mapped — categories included — and each job forecast weekly with the ledger rows behind every figure. Nothing is written back, and nothing leaves your network.
Committed cost and buyout from Sage 300 CRE
Posted job cost tells half the story. Sage 300 CRE also holds what has been committed — subcontracts in Subcontract Control and purchase orders in Purchasing — and a forecast without them runs low until the invoices post:
- Committed = original subcontract and PO amounts plus approved change orders, by job and cost code.
- Remaining committed = committed − invoiced to date: cost certain to post later.
- Buyout = the budget of the cost codes that have been bought against what they were committed for.
With a SQL reporting copy these join to job cost on job and cost code in one query rather than three exported reports. The arithmetic is in the committed cost guide.
The WIP columns a Sage 300 CRE report needs per company and job: contract and approved changes, budget, cost to date, committed not invoiced, estimated total cost, percent complete, earned revenue, billed to date and over or under billing.
13 columns: 13 you fill in. In the Excel version, 10 columns reject entries of the wrong type (a date column only takes dates, an amount column only numbers), the header row stays frozen with filters on it, and the workbook opens on an Instructions sheet that lists every column below.
Every column, and how it is captured
| Column | Type | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Text | Free text. |
| Job | Text | Job number exactly as in your accounting system (e.g. J-1104), so rows join to job cost. |
| Description | Text | What the line is, in words the other party will recognise. |
| Contract value | Amount ($) | Contract value including approved change orders. |
| Approved changes | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| Budget | Amount ($) | The budget for the line, from the estimate plus approved changes. |
| Cost to date | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| Committed not invoiced | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| Estimated total cost | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| % complete | Percent | Physical percent complete, 0–100, from the field — not cost spent. |
| Earned revenue | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| Billed to date | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
| Over (under) billed | Amount ($) | Enter the amount in dollars. |
See it on real-looking numbers
Constructelligence is a construction intelligence platform: it reads your ERP, project and field systems read-only and does this arithmetic every week, for every job. The demo runs it on a sample eight-job portfolio.
Try the demoJoin the private betaFrequently asked questions
How do I get a WIP report out of Sage 300 CRE?
Most contractors assemble it outside the system: pull contract value, cost to date, estimated total cost and billed to date by job — usually into Excel through the ODBC driver — then calculate percent complete, earned revenue and over- or under-billing. A construction intelligence layer can produce the same WIP continuously from the same tables.
What is the difference between a cost code and a category in Sage 300 CRE?
The cost code says what the work is (for example concrete foundations); the category says what kind of cost it is — labor, material, subcontract, equipment or other. Job cost is recorded against both, and categories can be defined differently in each company.
Can Sage 300 CRE forecast cost at completion?
It holds the inputs — budget, actual, committed cost and hours — but most forecasting is done in spreadsheets or by project managers. Forecasting weekly from those inputs, with percent complete from the schedule rather than from cost, is what catches overruns early.
Is it safe to connect reporting tools to Sage 300 CRE?
A read-only connection, with credentials that cannot write, is the standard for reporting. Check that any tool reads in place on your own network rather than copying your financials to a vendor's cloud.
How do I report committed cost from Sage 300 CRE?
Sum subcontracts from Subcontract Control and purchase orders from Purchasing, with their approved change orders, by job and cost code, then subtract what has been invoiced against them to get remaining committed cost. A SQL reporting copy lets you join this to job cost in one query.
How often can Sage 300 CRE reports refresh?
Reports run in Sage's own report writer are current when run. Dashboards reading a SQL copy refresh as often as the copy is loaded — hourly is common for job cost — rather than once a month.
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