Tracking real costs and your profit debrief
Quoting a job tells you what it should cost. Job costing tells you what it actually cost. As a job runs you log the real work and the real spend, and Surfacely compares the two — so you find out where the money went while you can still do something about it.
Logging work days and material purchases
On a project, open the Job costing section. There you log:
- Work days — the hours worked and how many people were on site that day. Surfacely tallies the real labour hours against the job.
- Material purchases — what you actually spent on paint and materials, in $.
Log them as you go — it's quick, and the running total is only as good as what you put in.
Burn alerts before it's too late
If a job starts eating its budget, Surfacely warns you early rather than at the post-mortem. You'll get tiered nudges as the job passes roughly 75%, 90%, and 110% of budget — delivered as an in-app notification, a push, and an email — so a job that's drifting can't slip by unnoticed.
Accepted variations widen the budget, so adding agreed extra work doesn't trip a false alarm. If the thresholds don't suit how you work, you can tune them in Settings.
Your profit debrief on completion
When you mark a job complete, Surfacely shows a profit summary comparing estimated against actual:
- Overall variance — did the job make what you expected
- Per-category breakdown — labour and each material category, so you can see exactly where the gap is
- A plain-English summary — a short read on how the job went
The plain-English summary is generated for you, and the debrief still works in full even if that part isn't available — the numbers are always there. From the debrief you can jump straight to the variance trend report to see whether this job was a one-off or a pattern.
Why it matters: a painter who logs actuals on every job stops guessing. Over a few jobs you'll see whether your labour rate, your prep levels, or your material allowances are the thing quietly costing you — and you can fix it before the next quote.