Control Material Costs: A 30-Day Plan for Contractors
A dated 30-day plan to control material costs: pull your price history, set PO and matching rules, and walk into the supplier conversation with receipts.
By Emily10 min read
The invoice desk
What we learn reading supply-house invoices all day: how unit prices creep per SKU, why the counter price never matches the contract price, which billing errors repeat every month, how duplicate invoices slip through, and what all of it does to your job costing and material margin. Written for the people who approve the invoice.
Who Manages Material Costs in a Contractor Business?
Who manages material costs in a contractor business, how to split buying, matching and price history across a 20-person shop, and when to hire for it.
By Emily9 min read
Export Purchase History From Your Supplier Portal
How to export purchase history from a supplier portal as a contractor, which fields you actually need, and what to do when the portal only hands you PDFs.
By Emily10 min read
Why Your Field Service Pricebook Drifts From Real Cost
ServiceTitan and every field service app freezes material cost the day you build the book. How pricebook material cost drift quietly eats your job margin.
By Emily10 min read
QuickBooks Material Items Setup for Contractors
Most shops book material as one lump sum, which erases unit price history at the source. A QuickBooks contractor material items setup that keeps every price.
By Emily10 min read
Contractor Material Cost Software Stack, Layer by Layer
A contractor material cost software stack runs five layers, counter ticket to general ledger. Here is what owns each one, and the middle layer nobody buys.
By Emily10 min read
Material Shrinkage for Contractors: Theft or Bad Coding
Material shrinkage in construction is usually a job coding problem, not theft. Here is the four-test sequence that tells a contractor which one they have.
By Reena11 min read
Supply House Backorders, Substitutions and Job Cost
A backorder substitution at the supply house is an unpriced change to your job cost. Here is how to spot the swap on an invoice and get the money back.
By Reena11 min read
Counter Purchases: Where Contractor Spend Control Dies
Counter purchases wreck contractor spend control: the ticket skips every check you own. Here is what a counter run bypasses and the fix that survives August.
By Reena9 min read
Will-Call vs Delivery: The Real Cost for Contractors
Will call vs delivery contractor cost, done properly: the labor, the truck, and the price nobody checked. Plus the break-even that tells you which one to use.
By Reena9 min read
Truck Stock Inventory for Contractors: Where It Leaks
Truck stock inventory is where contractor price control dies first. Here is how truck stock, shop stock and will-call leak cash, and the system that stops it.
By Reena10 min read
Build a Material Price Index From Your Own Invoices
How to build a material price index from invoices you already have: pick the basket, set a base month, weight it by real spend, and read what it tells you.
By Jordan11 min read