Did this job actually make money?

A full diary feels like proof a job went well. It isn’t — it’s proof you were busy, and busy and profitable are two different things. The invoice gets paid, the next job starts, and the hours that made this one thinner than it looked never get added up anywhere. Multiply that by every job in a year, and “always busy” quietly turns into “always broke,” with nothing on the diary that would have told you why.

The hours nobody bills

A job’s real cost is never just the hours on site. Four things routinely eat into a job without ever showing up as a line on the invoice:

• Unbilled hours. Quoting the job, the phone calls before it started, chasing the client for a decision — none of it is billable, and all of it takes real time.
• Travel. The drive there and back happened whether or not anyone paid for it, and on a small job it can be a bigger share of the day than the work itself.
• Materials waste and second trips. Offcuts, a part that didn’t fit, a supplier run you didn’t plan for — the receipt is real even when it never made it onto the quote.
• Rework and callbacks. Going back to fix something costs you the same hours and the same fuel as the first visit, for no extra invoice at all.

None of these are rare. Most jobs carry at least one of them, and a job that looked fine on the quote can still come out thin once all four are counted.

The arithmetic, on one real job

Take a job quoted at $400, excluding tax, with $40 in materials and other direct costs. It took six hours on site, an hour and a half of travel, and half an hour writing the quote and chasing a decision — eight hours in total once everything’s counted:

Compare that $45 to the target rate this job was supposed to clear — say $60 an hour, the figure a rate calculator would have given this business owner. The job fell $15 an hour short, or $120 short across the whole job. To have actually hit $60 an hour, the price would have needed to be $40 in costs plus $60 × 8 hours, or $520 — a full $120 more than what got charged.

Run your own job through the free job profit check and it does this arithmetic for you — type in the price, the costs, and the hours, and it gives back the real rate, the gap, and which block of hours ate the biggest share of the day.

Read the number

A real rate that falls short of the target usually points at one of four causes, and each one has its own fix:

• The scope was underquoted. The price didn’t cover what the job actually took. See how to price a job so the number holds up for building a price from real costs instead of a feeling.
• Extras never made it onto the invoice. Work got added mid-job and got done for free instead of billed. The extra work and scope scripts cover asking for approval before the work happens, not after.
• Travel ate the day. A long drive for a short job can outweigh the work itself. Run it through the minimum job price calculator before quoting the next one like it.
• Admin and rework quietly added hours. A slow decision chain or one return visit can turn a good price into a thin one without the scope ever changing.

What to change on the next quote

A single thin job isn’t a reason to panic — most businesses have a few. A pattern of them is a pricing problem, not bad luck. If the real rate keeps landing under the target across several jobs of the same kind, the fix is raising the price on that kind of work, not working faster. And if a job’s materials keep eating more of the margin than expected, running the numbers through the markup & margin calculator before the next quote catches it before the job starts, not after.

Make it a routine, not every job

Checking every single job this closely would take longer than most of them are worth. Three finished jobs a month — a mix of your usual work, not just the ones that felt hard — is usually enough to catch a pattern before it costs you a whole season. Pick ones that felt ordinary rather than ones that already felt like trouble; a job that seemed fine is exactly the kind that quietly isn’t.

This review works on what a job actually paid, not on what’s sitting in your account today — a busy month can still leave the bank thin if the money from it hasn’t landed yet. That gap is what the cash flow glossary entry covers, and it’s a different problem from the one this page solves.

Common questions

How much should I pay myself from a job?

That’s a drawings question, not a tax one, and it’s outside what this page covers. What this page gives you is the real hourly rate the job paid — once you know that number, whether to draw it all, save some, or leave it in the business is a separate call, and one worth a chat with an accountant if you’re unsure.

Should I put money aside for a quiet month?

Your overhead — insurance, a vehicle, software, a phone bill — keeps costing you whether or not a job comes in that week. A quiet-month fund is simply overhead saved up in advance rather than paid for out of the next busy week’s jobs. There’s no fixed amount to aim for; it depends on your own overhead and how unpredictable your work is.

How much should I keep in the bank?

There’s no single right number here — it depends on your overhead and how uneven your work is. A reasonable starting point is enough to cover your fixed overhead for as long as your slowest realistic stretch tends to run, then adjust the figure once you’ve actually been through one.

How do I stop underquoting?

Price the job from its real costs and your own hourly rate, not from a feeling. That’s the whole method in how to price a job so the number holds up — the review on this page is what tells you whether a quote actually held up once the work was done.

How do I work out my break-even?

That’s a business-wide number, not a per-job one — the revenue you need before any job counts as profit rather than just covering your overhead. See the break-even glossary entry for how to work it out; this page’s real hourly rate is the per-job number that tells you whether you’re on track to clear it.