Cost vs estimate, by category
Actual cost against the budget it was sold on, split into labour, material, subcontract, equipment and overhead — so the variance has a cause, not just a number.
- Overview
- Product
Everything a job's numbers can tell you, in one place
Twelve views across one intelligence layer, grouped the way a contractor asks the question — is this job going wrong, what is it doing to my cash, and can I trust the numbers. Every document matched to the ledger, and every table out to Excel or Power BI.
01
Catch the overrun
The four views that tell you a job is going wrong while there is still time to do something about it.
Forecast at completion
EAC, variance at completion and months-to-budget-exhaustion from each job's own burn rate, refreshed as transactions post rather than at month-end — sharpened by frontier models trained on proprietary construction cost data.
Overrun radar
Jobs ranked by exposure and by how far cost is ahead of schedule, with the driver named — the five you would ring this week, not the fifty in the ledger.
Committed cost & change orders
costed · committed · unapproved
Subcontracts awarded but not yet costed, and change-order work performed without an approval — the two ways a job's cost is worse than its ledger says.
02
Run the money
What is owed, what is unbilled, and what the hours are really costing — the four views a controller opens every morning.
Money at risk, in one figure
$4.1M · four causes
Projected overruns, work done but not billed, receivables past 60 days and the overtime premium — summed, broken down, and never guessed at when a table is missing.
Billing against cost (WIP)
Over- and under-billing per job, retention held, and how much of the portfolio you are financing rather than the owner.
AR and AP aging
Aged receivables and payables by customer, vendor and job, with collection risk and the invoices most likely to pass 90 days.
Labour burn, overtime and burden
Hours and loaded cost by job, month, employee and pay type — because on most jobs the overrun starts as hours, not as invoices.
03
Trust the numbers
The views that keep the other nine honest: what is misfiled, what is missing, and how to get it out.
Financial audit findings
7 checks · 2 findings · 1 to review
Duplicate invoice numbers, unnumbered bills, round-number bunching, cost on closed jobs, unallocated cost and pay-rate outliers — each with the money it implicates and the rows to check.
Costs posted where they should not be
Unallocated cost, closed-job postings and missing fields in the source data — found before they distort every number above.
Manpower and productivity
Headcount and hours per job against the plan, with non-productive time and double-time hotspots surfaced before they are another month of payroll.
Export and API
CSV · Excel · JSON
Any table as CSV or Excel across every company at once, and every module as a JSON endpoint — so Power BI, Excel or a script reads the same numbers the dashboard does.
Every document, matched to the numbers
Point it at your SharePoint and Dropbox job folders. Every estimate, change order, pay application and invoice is found, read, filed to the right job — and each figure on it is checked against the ledger, so a variance surfaces the day the document lands.
- FoundSharePoint
- Read14 fields
- FiledJob J-1104
- Matchedto the ledger
- Result—
ERP · read-onlyJ-1104 · Riverside Apartments
WaitingIllustrative example with sample figures. In a deployment the folders are yours and the right-hand column is your ERP, read-only.
Get the numbers out, in the shape you already use
Every table behind these views is a JSON endpoint, and any table can be exported as CSV or Excel — filtered, or in full across every company at once. Power BI, Excel and your own scripts read the same numbers the dashboard does, which is also how an accountant checks them.
- CSV or Excel for any table, with your own column order
- "All companies" exports stack every company database into one file, tagged by company
- Every module is also a REST endpoint — no connector project to get the data out
- Read-only throughout: nothing here can change your accounting data
Contract value
$48.2M
Gross profit
21.4%
AR outstanding
$886K
Jobs at risk
3
The questions this answers, in the words you would use
Ask it the way you would ask your controller. Each of these is a live view in the dashboard rather than a report someone assembles — and each names the module it lives in, so you can check the claim against the product.
You ask“Which jobs are over budget, and on what?”
Three jobs are forecast over budget. The worst is J-1104 Riverside: labor is +$212K (14%) against estimate, and the finishes crew is most of it.
J-1104 Riverside · labor+$212K
J-1121 Summit Hotel · subcontract+$96K
J-1109 Elm Park · materials+$41K
Ask nextWhy is Riverside labor over?
Job cost variance
The gap between what a job was estimated to cost and what it has cost so far, split by cost category.
CostOpens Costs & estimates
You ask“Are we over-billed anywhere this month?”
Three jobs are billed ahead of cost, $418K in total. Most of it is one job billed to a schedule of values that is running ahead of the work.
J-1104 Riverside+$186K
J-1095 Foundry Lofts+$131K
J-1101 Mason Street+$101K
Ask nextWhich jobs are under-billed?
Work in progress: over- and under-billing
How much you have billed against how much cost you have put in place, job by job — the number that decides whether revenue this month is real.
CashOpens Predictions → WIP aging
You ask“Where does this job finish if nothing changes?”
At the current rate it finishes at $4.19M against a $3.52M budget. CPI is 0.84, so it is paying $1.19 for every $1.00 of work earned.
Forecast at completion$4.19M
80% range$4.02M – $4.37M
Crosses budgetweek 26
Ask nextWhat if labor improves 10%?
CPI, SPI and forecast at completion
Earned-value cost and schedule performance, plus EAC, VAC and TCPI per job, with burn-rate projections for months-to-budget-exhaustion.
CostOpens Predictions → EVM
You ask“What does a foreman actually cost us an hour?”
$48.20 of pay is $71.90 once it is loaded — 49% on top. That is the rate your estimates should be carrying, not the pay rate.
Base pay$48.20
Burden & fringe+$17.30
Insurance & payroll tax+$6.40
Ask nextWhich crews run the hottest rate?
Labor burden and fringe
The difference between a worker's pay rate and what they actually cost the company, including fringe and burden, by job and by employee.
LaborOpens Labor & payroll
You ask“Who is burning overtime, and on which job?”
Crew 4 on J-1112 is at 31% overtime and $38K of premium this month. No other crew on any job is above 12%.
Crew 4 · J-111231% · $38K
Crew 2 · J-110412% · $11K
Crew 7 · J-10959% · $6K
Ask nextWhat does that do to the loaded rate?
Overtime and double-time exposure
Which jobs are running on overtime, where double-time hotspots are forming, and what that is doing to the loaded rate.
LaborOpens Manpower
You ask“Who owes us money past 60 days?”
$2.26M is past 60 days across 9 customers. The largest single balance is one GC at $610K, all of it on one job.
Northline Builders$610K
City of Elm Park$480K
7 other customers$1.17M
Ask nextWhich invoices go past 90 next?
AR aging and collection risk
Open receivables by bucket, by customer and by job, with the retention you are owed and the invoices most likely to go past 90 days.
CashOpens AR / AP
You ask“Did we pay any invoice twice?”
Two payments look like duplicates, $14,860 together: same vendor, same amount, and invoice numbers one character apart.
Keystone Glazing · INV-20418$7,430
Keystone Glazing · INV-2O418$7,430
PaidAug 4 and Aug 11
Ask nextAny other payments worth checking?
AP aging and duplicate invoices
What you owe, how old it is, and which vendor payments look unusual — duplicate invoice numbers, round-number clustering and Benford's Law deviation.
ControlsOpens Financial audit
You ask“What have we committed that has not hit cost yet?”
$1.3M is awarded but not yet costed, across 9 subcontracts. It is real exposure that will not appear in job cost until the first invoice.
Electrical · 3 subcontracts$520K
HVAC · 2 subcontracts$410K
4 other trades$370K
Ask nextWho is billing ahead of progress?
Committed cost and subcontract exposure
Subcontracts awarded but not yet costed, so the commitment is visible before it lands in job cost.
CostOpens Costs & estimates → Subcontracts
You ask“What work is going in without a signed change order?”
Six change orders are pending, and $287K of that work is already in place — the cost is in the job while the revenue is not.
CO-07 · J-1104 Riverside$118K in place
CO-04 · J-1121 Summit Hotel$96K in place
4 smaller change orders$73K in place
Ask nextWhich one has waited longest?
Unapproved change orders
Change orders with work performed but no approval, and the cost already sitting in the job.
CostOpens Executive → Change orders
You ask“What did our companies bill each other this quarter?”
$942K of intercompany billing this quarter, with 2 mismatches where one company posted and the other has not.
Intercompany billed$942K
Posted one side only$18,200
Amount differs$6,450
Ask nextShow the unmatched entries
Multi-entity and intercompany billing
When one of your companies bills another, and how that looks across every company database on the server — with your own vendor record kept out of vendor rankings.
CashOpens Multi-company
You ask“How much signed work is still ahead of us?”
$31.4M of contracted work is still to perform — about 14 months at the rate you are currently burning it.
J-1118 Northgate$5.1M left
J-1121 Summit Hotel$2.6M left
12 other jobs$23.7M left
Ask nextHow much of it is at risk?
Backlog and revenue recognition
Contracted work not yet performed, and where this period's revenue is coming from.
CashOpens Executive → Backlog
You ask“Is anything posted to closed or unallocated jobs?”
37 cost lines worth $52K are sitting on 3 closed jobs, and they are quietly distorting every margin above them.
Job J-0061 · closed May$31K · 19 lines
Job J-0208 · closed Jun$14K · 12 lines
Job J-0190 · closed Mar$7K · 6 lines
Ask nextWho posted them?
Costs posted where they should not be
Unallocated cost, costs on closed jobs, and missing fields in the source data — found before they distort every other view.
ControlsOpens Data health auditor
Example answers use illustrative figures. In the dashboard every one is read live from your own databases, with the rows behind it one click away.
More of the platform
Your numbers are already there. Go look at them properly.
Hosted for you or self-hosted, read-only, every user included. Connected and reconciled against your own reports in a single 90-minute session.