How to know a job's losing money before it's too late

Here's the trap most trades fall into: you price the job, win it, get stuck in — and then don't look at the numbers again until it's finished. When the final account lands and the profit isn't there, it's already too late. The overrun happened weeks ago. The moment to act is long gone.

Profit isn't lost at the final account. It's lost quietly, in week two, while you're too busy to notice. The trades who stay in profit are the ones who check the job against the quote as they go.

Track hours as you work, not after

For each section of the job, keep a running total of the hours actually worked against the hours you quoted. It takes two minutes at the end of a day. That simple habit turns "I think we're alright" into "first fix is eight hours over — I can see it."

Compare against the quote every week

Once a week, look at where each section stands. Some will be on track. One or two will be slipping. You want to know which, early, while there's still job left to claw it back on.

Flag the section that's running over

A job isn't one number — it's lots of small ones. If your tiling's bang on but your first fix has run 30% over hours, an overall "we're a bit behind" hides that. You need to see the specific section in the red so you can do something about that part: tighten the labour, adjust the sequence, or have the conversation with the client now rather than at the end.

Fix it while you still can

That's the whole point of catching it early — you've still got options. Left until the final account, you have none; you just absorb the loss and move on to the next one, none the wiser. Caught in week one, an overrun is a problem you can manage.

You don't need fancy software for this — you need the discipline to log hours as you go and something that shows you, at a glance, which parts of the job are winning and which are quietly costing you. Once you can see it, you can fix it.