Budget and planning
Budgets turn your goals into numbers you can check every month. On the exam you will see overhead, break-even, and the difference between markup and margin; on the job, these numbers decide whether your bids cover your costs and whether growth helps or hurts you.
A budget is a written plan of expected revenue and costs for a future period. It is not a guess you make once and forget. You compare the budget with actual results every month, find the differences (called variances), and fix problems while there is still time.
The business plan
A business plan describes what your company does, who your customers are, how you will win work, who will run each part of the business, and how you will pay for it. The financial part includes a sales forecast, an operating budget, a capital budget, a cash flow projection, and a break-even analysis. Banks, sureties, and investors usually ask for a business plan and financial statements before they lend or give credit.
Operating budget vs capital budget
| Feature | Operating budget | Capital budget |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Day-to-day revenue and expenses for the year | Major long-term purchases |
| Examples | Labor, materials, office rent, insurance, advertising | Trucks, excavators, a yard or building, software systems |
| Time frame | Usually one year, broken into months | Several years (the life of the asset) |
| On financial statements | Income statement expenses | Balance sheet assets, expensed through depreciation |
Direct costs and overhead
Direct job costs are costs you can trace to one specific job: field labor on that job, materials installed, subcontractors, equipment used on that job, and job permits. Overhead, also called general and administrative (G&A) costs or indirect costs, keeps the company running but is not tied to one job: office rent, office staff salaries, accounting, advertising, company insurance, and vehicles used for office or sales work.
| Cost | Direct job cost or G&A? |
|---|---|
| Carpenter wages for hours worked on the Smith job | Direct (labor) |
| Concrete delivered to the Smith job | Direct (materials) |
| Building permit for the Smith job | Direct |
| Rented lift used only on the Smith job | Direct (equipment) |
| Office manager’s salary | G&A |
| Depreciation on a car used by the sales staff | G&A |
| Office rent, phones, accounting software | G&A |
| Yellow pages or website advertising | G&A |
Know this
If you can point to one job and say ‘this cost exists because of that job,’ it is a direct cost. If the cost supports the whole company, it is overhead (G&A).
Fixed, variable, and semi-variable costs
Fixed costs stay the same in a period no matter how much work you do, like office rent. Variable costs rise and fall with the amount of work, like materials and field labor. Semi-variable costs have both parts, like a phone plan with a monthly base fee plus usage charges. Most overhead is fixed, and most direct job costs are variable.
Recovering overhead in your bids
Every bid must include a share of overhead, or the company loses money even when each job ‘makes a profit’ on direct costs. A common way is to budget overhead for the year, divide it by the direct costs you expect for the year, and apply that percentage to each job’s direct costs. Then add profit.
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