The tool, in your browser
The job report card
One row per finished job. Type what you bid for materials, labor, dump and overhead and what each actually cost, then the price you bid and every dollar you collected. The card works out the margin you bid, the margin you kept, the points between them, and which line leaked. The box at the top counts the jobs under your target.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This card only knows about this browser. Nothing you type is sent to us and nothing syncs, so the phone and the office computer each keep their own copy — and anyone who opens this page on that computer can read every job and every margin on it. Clearing your browsing data wipes it, and a new phone won’t bring it along. Keep the-job-report-card.xlsx on the computer at the office if a year of grades has to last.
The report card fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
What the leak means
It names a cost line. It never names the price.
“Where it leaked” is the one cost line that ran furthest over its bid. A change order or a supplement that pushed the price up doesn’t count against anything — extra money only pays for leaks, it doesn’t cause them. So a job where every line held, or came in under, says Nothing over — the bid held, even if the price came in short.
Points lost is the margin you bid minus the margin you kept, in percentage points: bid 14.3% and keep 6.8% and you lost 7.4 points on that job. The average at the top is the number to watch across a season. The margin you bid comes off The Job-Cost Sheet, and the materials bid off The Takeoff Sheet — the same four lines, so the two sheets can be laid side by side.
How it gets used
- Grade it after the last dollar is collected, not the day the crew leaves. An uncollected balance is a price you haven’t got yet, and grading early hides it.
- Copy the bid column off the bid. Not off memory. The four cost lines are the ones on the job-cost sheet you priced it from.
- Actuals off the paper: supplier invoices, payroll or the sub’s bill, the dump tickets. Overhead is the same share both times unless the job ran long.
- Read the leak, then go fix that one thing. Labor three jobs running is a crew problem. Materials three jobs running is a takeoff or a supplier problem. One line, one fix.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same report card as a spreadsheet
the-job-report-card.xlsx is this card as a spreadsheet — same columns, same margins, same leak — for the computer at the office. Three differences in the page’s favour: there’s no row-22 ceiling (a job typed below it in the file looks fine on screen and is in no average); the example row is placeholder text here, so there’s nothing to delete before you start; and a box holding something that isn’t a number says so and leaves the job ungraded, where the file quietly reads it as nothing and grades the job short. One the other way: the file is a real file, so a year of grades survives a cleared browser and prints for the meeting. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M6-19 When the Last Check Clears, Grade the Job — is where the report card comes from, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.