Approve what the crew clocked
They clocked in against the job this morning. You tick the hours. Each one costs to the job at that person’s burdened rate — wage plus CPP, EI, WSIB and vacation, not the bare hourly.
Budget tracking & job costing
Stop entering job costs into a spreadsheet.
That is the old way of running a trade job. Your budget should track itself — from receipts your crew photographs and a two-minute report at the end of the day.
Contract total$157,222.47incl. HST
Spent to date$59,891.86updated this morning
Remaining$97,330.6162% of budget left
| Category | Original | Change orders | Spent | In bank | Owing | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Materials +HST | $33,029.06 | +$450.00 | $21,443.88 | $8,972.87 | $3,062.31 | $12,035.18 |
| Labour | $42,327.95 | +$4,550.00 | $22,718.70 | $281.30 | $23,877.95 | $24,159.25 |
| Sub trades +HST | $48,364.00 | +$2,500.00 | $14,509.20 | −$7,509.20 | $43,864.00 | $36,354.80 |
| Profit | $18,140.55 | — | $1,220.08 | −$470.08 | $17,390.55 | $16,920.47 |
| Taxes | $7,860.91 | — | $0.00 | $750.00 | $7,110.91 | $7,860.91 |
| Total | $149,722.47 | +$7,500.00 | $59,891.86 | $2,024.89 | $95,305.72 | $97,330.61 |
A real job, mid-build. Nothing on this screen was typed into a spreadsheet — it came from receipts, approved crew hours and the daily report.
The spreadsheet is the problem
Not the maths — the typing
The problem: Every cost on a job already exists somewhere — on a receipt, in a text about hours, on a sub-trade invoice. The work is not calculating anything. It is you, at the kitchen table on a Sunday, typing all of it into a spreadsheet a week after it happened.
So it gets done late, or partly, or not at all. And a budget that is a week behind cannot tell you anything while you can still act on it.
- A receipt in the truck door is a cost the budget does not know about
- Hours in a group chat are the biggest cost on the job, unallocated
- By the time the spreadsheet is current, the job is finished
The spreadsheet way
- Collect receipts all week
- Total up hours from texts
- Chase sub-trade invoices
- Type it all in on Sunday
- Hope nothing was missed
Budget is a week old
In Contrax
- Crew clock in on the job
- Photograph the receipt at the till
- Declare subs on the daily report
- Two minutes at end of day
- Nothing gets missed
Budget is live
Where everyone else stops
Knowing you are $3,000 over is useless. Knowing why is everything.
Any decent software can tell you materials came in over budget. That is a number, and it does not help — because you cannot fix a problem you cannot see the cause of. So Contrax goes one level deeper than anyone else.
Tile & waterproofing — quoted vs actual
$1,180 over
You quoted
Wall tile · 92 sqft$2,688
Floor tile · 40 sqft$1,420
Schluter & membrane$610
Thinset & grout$240
Receipts, line by line
Wall tile · 92 sqft$2,688
Floor tile · 40 sqft$1,455
Schluter & membrane$623
Thinset & grout$268
Self-levelling compound ×9$486
Extra wall tile — breakage$378
There it is. The quoted lines came in almost exactly right. The overrun is two things you never priced: $486 of self-levelling compound because the subfloor was worse than it looked, and $378 of extra tile from breakage. Now you know to check the subfloor on the next quote, and to carry a breakage allowance.
The AI breaks every receipt into its individual lines. You match them to the estimate lines they belong to — a couple of taps — and anything that matches nothing lands in unexpected purchases. That bucket is the answer to “why”, and no other contractor software puts it in front of you.
Two minutes at the end of the day
One report. Everything the budget needs.
Not data entry — four things your foreman already knows, tapped on a phone before he leaves site. Everything after this happens on its own.
Photograph them, that is all
AI reads the vendor, the date, the tax and every line on the receipt, matches it to the bank transaction when it posts, and files it against the job. No typing, no shoebox, no Sunday.
Declare the invoice
Peter’s electrical came in at $1,850. Say so on the report and it lands on the job, allocated, with the HST captured — not sitting in your inbox until month end.
Flag anything due to the client
A draw ready to invoice, an extra that needs a change order. Raised from the same report, so what you bill stays in step with what you spend.
The budget moves when the job moves
Two things that quietly wreck a job budget.
Change orders
Priced, signed, and in the budget before the work starts
The homeowner asks for a heated floor. You price it off your rate book on site, they sign on their phone, and it is added to the contract and the budget at the same moment.
That second half is the part everyone misses. Raise the invoice without raising the budget and the job instantly looks over — so you stop trusting the number, and the number stops being useful.
Original contract$18,400
CO-001 · niche & bench+$1,065
CO-002 · heated floor+$2,416
Budget now$21,881
Live HST
The tax in your bank account is not your money
Deposits land with HST on top. It sits in the same account as everything else and it looks like profit — right up until you file.
Contrax tracks it on the job, live: HST collected on what the client has paid, less the input tax credits on your materials and sub-trades. What is left is what you actually owe.
HST collected on draws$3,393
ITCs — materials & subs−$1,538
Owing to CRA$1,855
Every receipt you photograph adds its ITC here the same day. That is money back, and it is the part most contractors leave on the table.
No US-built platform models this, because HST and input tax credits do not exist there. They handle state sales tax, which behaves differently and is not recoverable the same way.
Why it works here and not bolted on
One set of numbers, entered once — mostly not by you.
Estimate
Budget
Change orders
Daily report
Actual cost
Line-by-line why
HST owing
Most platforms stop after the invoice and hand the rest to QuickBooks — which is why they can tell you what a job billed and not what it cost, let alone why. Contrax keeps the books, so the estimate, the receipts and the ledger are the same numbers all the way through.
What it changes on Monday
- Sunday stops being paperwork. The budget was current before anyone left site on Friday.
- You catch an overrun mid-job — and you can see which line caused it while there is still a week to react.
- You quote the next one better. Breakage allowance, subfloor prep, the things that got you last time.
- Nothing goes missing. A receipt photographed at the till is a cost on the job before you are back in the truck.
Last 10 bathrooms vs last 10 basements
Bathrooms34%
Basements11%
Decks28%
You’d bid the next basement differently.
Run one job through it for a week.
Photograph the receipts, do the two-minute report, and look at the budget on Friday. That is the whole test.
7 days free · no credit card · then $49.99/mo for 3 months