Monitoring costs
One of the most common methods of monitoring costs is to use financial or accounting software. Usually all purchases are entered into the accounting software under a job name or code. The majority of accounting software packages will allow you to:
- choose a job and list all the expenditure up-to-date (ie looking at the overall cost for a project so far)
- list expenditure by job stages (eg looking at the expenses for the base stage).
To start comparing estimated costs with actual costs it is important to work from the quoted price. A builder can compare their actual prices with the quoted price:
- at the end of each stage by comparing the sub-total
- for each task (eg set earthworks)
- for each item (eg the cost of timber).
The following table shows the effects the actual costs have on the overall project price. Select the tabs to see how actual costs may vary from quoted costs.