Know your real margin on every job
Actual hours and materials, tracked against what you quoted
See exactly what a job earned the moment it wraps up, not months later when the annual numbers don't quite add up.
Most trade businesses find out whether a job made money weeks or months after the fact, when the invoice is paid, the accounts are reconciled, and someone works backwards through what actually happened. By then, the pattern that's eating your margin has already repeated itself six more times.
Job costing in Swiftscope tracks actual labour hours and materials used against what was quoted, in real time as the job runs. Your team logs hours from their phones. Materials used are recorded against the job. At the end, you see the actual margin on that specific job, not an average across everything you've done this quarter.
That granularity matters. It lets you see that your bathroom renovation quotes are consistently running over by 15% in labour, or that a specific supplier's materials pricing is killing your margin on a certain job type. You can't fix what you can't see, and right now most tradies can't see it until the damage is done.
What it does
- Actual hours tracked against quoted labour from day one
- Materials used recorded and compared against what was quoted
- Real margin visible on every individual job
- Spot patterns - which job types or clients run over consistently
- Variations tracked separately from the base job cost
- No lengthy setup or implementation project required
What you'd pay elsewhere
SimPro sells job costing as a premium add-on, priced per user. It's part of the base Swiftscope plan, no upsell required.
How it works
From zero to done
Quote is built with your rates
Every quote is built from your own price book - your negotiated supplier rates and your hourly rate. That quote becomes the baseline the actual job is measured against.
Team logs hours from the field
Team members log start and finish times from their phones as the job runs. No paper timesheets, no end-of-week catch-up. Hours are attributed to the correct job automatically.
Materials used are recorded
As materials are consumed on the job, they're recorded in the app. If something was ordered that wasn't in the original quote, it's flagged as a variation or absorbed into costs.
Variation costs are tracked separately
Any approved variations are tracked as add-ons to the original quote. You can see margin on the base job and margin including variations side by side.
Job closes, margin is visible
When the job is marked complete, the actual vs quoted comparison is ready. Labour variance, materials variance, and final margin are all visible in one view.
Why Swiftscope
Not another tool.
The last one.
See exactly what a job earned the moment it wraps up, not months later when the annual numbers don't quite add up.
SimPro is a comprehensive platform and job costing is one of its genuinely strong features. But it's enterprise software with an enterprise implementation overhead - it typically takes weeks to set up, costs significantly more per user, and has a learning curve that assumes you have someone whose job is to manage the software.
Swiftscope's job costing is scoped for a sole trader or small crew who wants to know whether their jobs are making money without a training course or a dedicated admin person. The setup is the same as signing up - your price book is your price book, your team logs hours, and the reports are just there.
The other thing worth noting is the price book integration. Because your quotes are built from your actual supplier prices and your actual hourly rate, the comparison between quoted and actual is genuinely meaningful. You're not comparing against a generic industry rate - you're comparing against your own numbers.
Keep exploring
The rest of the platform
Local discovery
Free directory listing with Google ratings. Homeowners find you and contact you direct. No per-lead auction.
Job management
Quotes, jobs, scheduling, variations, job costing. All in one place, all on your phone.
Mobile quoting
Trade-specific quote builder on your phone. Send the quote before you leave the driveway.
Drawing markup
Upload site plans, draw cable runs or pipe routes, count items. Costs link to your quote.
Xero invoice push
Connect Xero once. When a quote is accepted, Swiftscope pushes a draft invoice so you are not re-typing totals.