A-Systems JobView is a great fit for electricians because it offers thorough job cost tracking, which is a must for keeping track of material expenses. Many A-Systems JobView users are electrical contractors.
| General Ledger | Inventory |
| Accounts Payable | Sales Orders |
| Accounts Receivable | Purchase Orders |
| Job Costing | Change Orders |
| Payroll | Custom Reports |
Contractors frequently choose to move from standard accounting software to something that's tailored to their industry. A-Systems excels in job cost accounting, because that's all we've done for 48 years.
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It might be a sufficient fit to cover basic accounting, but we always advocate for strong job costing functionality, which can be found in software made specifically for the construction industry.
Of course we recommend A-Systems JobView, because many of its features were recommended by the contractors that use it. It's been made for the construction industry since 1978, so it has been tailored to the needs of contractors for several decades.
Electrical work has some distinct challenges, even when compared to other construction trades. Materials, for one thing, are numerous. Unlike a plumber who primarily deals with pipe and fittings, or a framer working with lumber, electricians have to manage a pretty big variety of materials. That would include everything from wire in dozens of gauges and types to breakers, panels, fixtures, devices, and conduit. Not to mention the testing equipment. Because of the nature of electrical work, each project might require hundreds of little items, so tracking the cost of those items is crucial.
In addition to materials, there are a number of project types electricians might have, and they each have different accounting requirements. You might do a residential service call on Monday morning, billing for time and materials. You may have a similar project, but you're working from a fixed bid, trying to finish the job with your profit intact. The next day, you could be doing a big commerical project. If you've got a government contract, that would involve ensuring prevailing wage compliance. The point is, each contract has different ways of tracking the work, different billing methods, and different types of reporting.
Then, of course, there are taxes. You've got to consider taxable materials vs. non-taxable labor, and that varies by state. Certified payroll has its own set of rules that must be followed for government jobs.
A-Systems software is built with all of this in mind. You can track all the jobs of various types, with their unique requirements, all in one place. Reports are thorough and detailed, so you can tell where you stand each day, cutting down on unwanted surprises.
When the margins are tight and the cost variables are numerous, it can be risky to lose track of your costs. And losing track on a big job is easy to do without a good system in place. Consider the amount of variables at play. Say you're doing a job on a multi-tenant unit. You might make several runs for supplies to get more materials. Some of those materials will be left over and used on different jobs. Other materials might be returned. If you're not keeping up as you go, your inventory would be kind of a blur. Then, when payroll arrives, you find out one of your employees did overtime. That's an unexpected expense that will eat into your profit. So is the change order that came up after an inspection. If your accounting system is on paper, you might not realize the effect of these expenses until long after jobs are done. That's a scary risk, because if you're not going to be profitable, you need to know sooner than later.
Untracked expenses might not seem significant at the time they're made. A little overtime here, $30 of wire nuts there. However, over time these things add up. A few extra dollars of materials here and there will eventually be thousands in suprise expenses when all is said and done.
You want to take the most profitable jobs, but if your accounting is all lumped together, how can you assess which jobs are best? Tracking profit job by job helps you find those best opportunities. It also helps you accurately estimate expenses and give better bids.
In business, data is invaluable. It allows you to make calculated decisions. For example, maybe you've been putting off purchasing a new piece of equipment. That new upgrade might actually speed up your money making efforts, but you'd need a way to forecast that. Cost data from past jobs will make that possible.
When it comes to turning a profit, it's often the small things that make a difference. You'd generally recognize the big, dramatic issues, like lack of new contracts. More often, it's little oversights that add up over time that really threaten a contractor's success.
As mentioned before, not tracking little expenses can turn into a real issue. Say you send the apprentice to the supply house for a box of wire nuts, some MC connectors, and electrical tape. It's $47, so it might seem trivial at the moment. Consequently, you don't bother recording which job it was for. Instead, you just code it as "shop supplies." A journeyman stops at the hardware store on the way to a job site for cable staples and a couple of junction boxes. Another $23. It seems small at the time, so it doesn't get tracked to a job either. Now when you review your job's profitability report, it won't be accurate. You'll overestimate how much money will be left.
If this kind of lax cost tracking is a regular occurance, you can expect it to become a bigger issue. If this happens a few times a week, that might end up being $10,000 a year. That's $10,000 of untracked material, so when you check your records, you don't really know how much you've spent on each item. How can you give accurate bids without that info?
At the time of purchase, you might find it inconvenient to have employees note the job number on a receipt. However, once you've input that information into your job costing system, the software will handle the rest for you. You can now grab that data in any number of reports. The better you track expenses to their respective jobs, the more insightful your job cost reports become.
It's a no-brainer to track your vehicle expenses. You pay for a truck, fuel, oil changes, tires, and insurance, and it's no small thing. But, do you allocate those costs across your jobs?
That truck isn't just a business expense. It's not a pad of sticky notes or box of pens for the office. It's another piece of equipment goes to the job site and allows the work to be done. And, just like other equipment, some jobs wear on the your vehicle more than others. You might have a big commercial job 25 miles away, and the back and forth travel will be significant by the time the job is done. Fuel costs to move a big truck or van aren't negligible. By tracking those miles and assigning them to a job, you can estimate fuel, tire, and maintenance costs.
This same principle applies to moving big equipment from job to job. Whether you're hauling a generator or scaffolding, it costs money to pull trailers around. If those costs are lumped into a "general overhead" category, you're treating nearby jobs and distant jobs as the same thing. They're not the same though. Distance adds expense. We know this makes sense, but you might be reluctant to change your cost tracking method because you're not sure how. That's understandable. Change takes time, and that's one thing we're all short on. However, the time you invest into proper cost management will pay off later. You'll have easy to find data, making it much easier to pull accurate reports.
Service and repair work is the bread and butter for many electrical contractors, but because those calls are unpredictable, labor costs can spiral out of control. You might think you're looking at a simple outlet replacement, but it can turn into a troubleshooting adventure that drains valuable time.
It becomes an issue when actual labor hours aren't tracked against estimated hours. Say you quote two hours at $150/hour for a total $300 of labor. The service tech then actually spends 3.5 hours on site. At a loaded labor cost of $45/hour (wages + burden), that's $157.50 in labor cost. You may think you made $150 in labor profit, but you actually made $142.50. And, yes, that's not a huge deal on one job, but it becomes one when it happens regularly. Imagine losing $50 on dozens of service calls monthly. Your margins will dissolve before your eyes.
When this happens, you never learn which types of service calls consistently run over. Using A-Systems JobView, you can run a job cost analysis report to see estimated vs actual costs and identify issues early. You might find you're great at estimating new installations, but not so efficient at estimating your troubleshooting time. You might find that you consistently go over on older properties, because they often have more hidden surprises like old wiring that needs to be replaced. Getting that information is invaluable for the future of your company. You can use it to more accurately build in profit, based on more precise bids.
No one loves changing plans halfway through a job, but change orders happen. They are inevitable. It could be as simple as changing a light fixture out, or more complicated, like moving an entire wall. Whatever the change, there's usually additional work, which should translate to additional revenue if it's documented properly. However, in order to save some time, some contractors take shortcuts on documentation.
A simple example would be a customer asking for a few extra outlets. To speed things up, the crew just says, "No problem," and adds them into the job. At the end of the job they try to bill it from memory, and the customer doesn't remember agreeing to extra charges. The new price was not calculated into the cost or formally approved by the client, so the contractor is not able to make those extra charges. Those costs are then eaten by the electrician in order to avoid a conflict.
A mishandled change order will throw off your budgeted costs vs. actual costs, and it could be a nasty surprise. On the other hand, a signed change order, properly accounted for, will save your profit later on. A-Systems JobView is built to handle change orders smoothly, so you don't waste a lot of time on accounting and you can get back to the job.
Another risk with change orders is multiple changes. The client suggested three changes, but only approved two so far. You need a way to document each one so they can be handled individually. If you've already purchased extra materials for that third change, but ultimately the client never approves it, that cost is on you. Good documentation will help you avoid these costly communication errors.
Electrical work involves a lot of inventory like wire, breakers, boxes, devices, conduit, etc. That inventory represents cash sitting on your shelves or in your trucks. However. some contractors aren't keeping tabs on that inventory. A service tech would often have to go physically check a truck to see if there's a particular part available. A good tracking system would make this a lot easier.
You may have had good intentions from the beginning. We always do. You know how much stock you have at the start, but then you grab some wire and forget to record it. Another electrician returns unused materials from a completed job, but it's not recorded that it's available for us. Your inventory management system is crying because it has no idea where everything is. Maybe you do a physical count every now and again for tax purposes and discover that you're missing $3,000 worth of materials. Now you want to know where it went, but because it wasn't logged, you have no idea. Did you use more than expected on the last big job, or have people been walking off with it. Only detailed record keeping could tell you that.
So what's the big deal with that? First, you might order materials you already have. We've all been there. Second, you might bid jobs thinking you need to buy materials when you have them in stock, making your bids higher than they need to be. Of course a little extra profit doesn't hurt, but if you lose the bid because of an overly-high price, that means no profit at all.
A system of real-time tracking, where every piece of inventory is logged when it goes in or out, would definitely keep your inventory up to date. It might also be extremely cumbersome to track every bit of movement though. A practical option is to take inventory monthly. That way you're not losing track of anything major, but you're also not spending all your work time nitpicking every wire nut and roll of electrical tape.
Proper job costing software can help by automatically reducing inventory when materials are issued to jobs, as well as increasing it when materials are purchased or returned. Then you can do occasional physical counts to catch any discrepancies. If you keep coming up short on copper wire, maybe you have a security issue. If you're consistently finding more breakers than expected, maybe your crew is over-ordering or maybe returns aren't being properly credited. The data can give you these clues.
Whatever you choose for your accounting system, you'll be best served by a software that's built around job costing. A lot of electrical contractors have chosen A-Systems JobView for their job costing. You can get a look at its features, or see a full guided tour.