Find out during the job.
Not after it.
You priced it right. Three weeks in, is it still right? The receipts are in the truck, the hours are in a text thread, the sub’s invoice is in an email, and by the time you add it up the job is over. CostSlate adds it up while it runs — every hour, every receipt, every sub, against the trade it belongs to — so the margin on the screen is the margin on the job.
The whole job, start to closeout
Set up a job in minutes. No spreadsheet to build, no formulas to break — and your margin is there without you working it out.
Your crew clock in from a link on their phone — no app store, no password, works with no signal — onto the job and the trade they are on. Every hour carries your burdened rate, so labour is a number you know on Tuesday, not one you guess at until payroll.
Photograph the receipt at the counter and it is on the job the same day, under the trade it belongs to. Subs’ invoices the same way. When the job is done the costs are already sorted, and the shoebox never happens.
Receipts and hours roll up against the budget as they land. Profit to date is what you have invoiced less what it has cost so far, trade by trade — so the one that is eating the margin shows in week three, while you can still do something about it.
What was invoiced and paid, what remains to bill, the hours behind it by trade, receipts and subs folded in. Built straight from the records, worded the way you want, published to their portal when you choose. The conversation about where the money went, already answered.
Say what the work is the way you would tell a sub, and a draft budget comes back from a 323-item library priced for your area, client selections already marked as allowances. Correct it line by line; markup, general conditions and contingency roll up as you type.
Proposal, budget detail, allowance schedule and change orders on your letterhead, never your costs. A private link they open on their phone and sign. Bill the contract or a percentage of it, with a payment link, from the page they read the budget on.
Your first job, before the kettle boils
No spreadsheet to build, no formulas to wire up, nothing to import. Three steps, and only one of them is work.
Type what the work is the way you would tell a sub. A draft budget comes back priced from a library made for your area, with the client selections already flagged as allowances.
Change the quantities, add what it missed, delete what it invented. This is the part only you can do, and it is the part you are being paid for.
A proposal on your letterhead, printed or sent as a PDF — or a private link your client opens on their phone and signs. Your costs and your markup never leave the app.
After that it keeps itself up to date. Receipts photographed at the counter, your crew’s hours from their phones, change orders your client signs — all landing against the same budget, so the margin on the screen is the margin on the job.
Sound familiar?
The estimate is the easy part. It is everything after it that costs you money.
Cost to date against the contract, by trade, updating as the receipts and hours land. You see the trade going over in week three, with weeks left to pull it back.
A time-and-materials client asks, and you spend an evening in emails and bank statements. The statement of account is built from the records in one press: invoiced, paid, remaining, the hours by trade, the receipts folded in.
Your crew clock in from their phones, onto the job and the trade. Labour lands the day it happens, at what it actually costs you with burden, and the guessing stops.
A change order the client signs from their portal, that rolls into the contract total when approved — and a contract total that never moves on its own. The argument in month four, avoided in month one.
Entering real costs changes your projected profit, never what the client owes. Only an approved change order does that. It is the difference between a budget you trust and a spreadsheet you have to re-check.
The one that is running now. Log Friday’s receipts, have the crew clock in on Monday, and by the end of the week you will know whether it is making what you priced it to make. Thirty days free, no card, and everything you enter exports any time.
Named for the slate. The board the tally was always kept on, and the one you showed your work on. Both still apply.
Cost-library figures are ballpark planning estimates for guidance only — always verify against local subcontractor and supplier quotes.