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How Does Scaftra Do Job Costing?

How do you know whether you are over or under on a trade before the job is done?

Scaftra tracks the planned budget, the commitments you are on the hook for, and the actual costs that have hit the books, broken down by trade and cost code, so variance is live.

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The problem it solves

Every construction job has a cost half: how much you planned to spend, how much you have promised to spend, and how much has actually been spent, by trade and cost category. A GC's profit is the gap between what the owner pays and what the job costs, so the cost side is where margin is won or lost. When costs live in a spreadsheet separate from the books, the variance is always stale.

Why it matters

Knowing you are over on framing or cabinets while the job is running is what lets you correct it. The standard contractor cost ledger is a budget baseline, commitments (purchase orders and subcontracts), actual costs (real invoices and labor), change orders that move the budget, and backcharges you recover from a sub. Cost codes roll all of it up so the answer to 'are we over on this trade' is one query, not a reconciliation.

Common mistakes

Try
Hand-setting the committed or actual numbers
Reality
Committed and actual are derived rollups; a manual write desyncs them from the records that justify them.
Try
Counting draft invoices as actual cost
Reality
Actual cost should only materialize from submitted invoices and journal entries, not drafts or the budget screen.
Try
Making users pick cost codes
Reality
Cost codes are an internal taxonomy; a user-facing picker reverses a deliberate product decision.
Try
Treating a backcharge record as recovered money
Reality
The backcharge is the claim; only a settlement application against a target actually recovers money.

How it works

  1. Set the budget baseline
    Budget lines materialize from the approved estimate, or arrive by import or manual entry, with a planned amount per line.
  2. Record commitments
    Purchase orders and subcontracts link to a budget line, and the committed amount is recomputed from them.
  3. Ingest actual costs on submit
    Submitted purchase invoices and journal entries become cost transactions, allocated to the right line by precedence.
  4. Read variance live
    Variance is planned minus committed minus actual per line, recomputed as the source records change.

How Scaftra does it

Scaftra builds the cost arc as derive-don't-store: the planned amount is the only authored number, and committed and actual are recomputed from their child records on every relevant save, so the rollup can never drift from the records that justify it. Commitments recompute the committed amount; submitted purchase invoices and journal entries become cost transactions that allocate to a line by exact-match precedence, falling through to unallocated rather than guessing. Cost codes are an internal taxonomy users never select; classification is automatic. Change orders move the budget and the contract in lockstep, and backcharge recoveries are capped at the approved amount. The summary overlays earned-value metrics by joining actuals against earned value. This is built and live.

Scaftra keeps committed and actual as live rollups from the source records, so trade-by-trade variance is current instead of a stale spreadsheet.

Key capabilities

  • Derived cost rollups: Committed and actual are recomputed from commitments and submitted invoices, never hand-set.
  • Precise cost allocation: Cost transactions allocate by exact-match precedence and fall through to unallocated rather than guessing a code.
  • Automatic cost coding: A layered classifier assigns the leaf cost code, so users never pick codes.
  • Change orders and backcharges: Change orders move budget and contract together; backcharge recovery is capped at the approved amount.

Benefits

  • Variance per trade is live, so an overrun surfaces while you can still act on it.
  • Actual cost only counts submitted invoices and labor, so it reflects real spend.
  • Change orders keep the budget and the contract in lockstep instead of drifting apart.

Who it's for

Project managers and purchasing agentsControllers and accounting roles
  • Project managers and purchasing agents.Roles issuing commitments and approving change orders who need live variance by trade.
  • Controllers and accounting roles.Finance staff allocating actual costs and settling backcharges against the budget.

Frequently asked questions

Where does actual cost come from?
From submitted purchase invoices and journal entries, converted into cost transactions and allocated by precedence. Drafts and the budget screen never write actual cost.
Do users pick cost codes?
No. Cost codes are an internal taxonomy assigned automatically by a layered classifier. The user-facing picker was deliberately removed.
How do change orders affect the budget?
An approved change order moves the budget baseline and the contract value in the same transaction, so cost and contract stay in lockstep.

One job. One record. From the field to the books.

Bring one project onto Scaftra. We'll set up your trades, your rooms, your proof chain, and your vendor portal, and connect it to the financial system you already run.