You bought job costing software and no one uses it
Software gets used when it saves each person a step. It gets dropped when it adds one.
The office bought it to see job cost, and the field was never asked. Foremen are told to enter hours and quantities in a second place after entering them somewhere else, so they stop. The office follows people up for entries, the numbers go stale, and the software becomes one more login. Within a year the budget is back in a spreadsheet and the subscription keeps renewing.
Three moves, in order
What CFOS does about it
Each person opens to the screen for their own seat. The foreman sees the schedule and the daily, the project manager sees cost to complete, and the owner sees the gauges. Hours come in from the time clock app your crew already uses, or from CFOS time entry, and they reach the job without anyone typing them again. When the field enters once, the office has nothing to follow up.
Who owns this: Owner and office manager.
At $6M, the PMs and foremen decide whether the software gets used. Look at last month's entries by person and find the two who enter the least. Ask them what they would change, and fix that first.
30 days free, a 90-day money-back guarantee, and cancel anytime. It opens January 2027.
Step 08: Standards and accountability
Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work.
Other problems step 08 solves
Other things that go wrong
What owners ask
Construction software no one uses?
Software gets used when it saves each person a step. It gets dropped when it adds one. The office bought it to see job cost, and the field was never asked. Foremen are told to enter hours and quantities in a second place after entering them somewhere else, so they stop. The office follows people up for entries, the numbers go stale, and the software becomes one more login. Within a year the budget is back in a spreadsheet and the subscription keeps renewing.
Which part of the system fixes this?
The step is number 08, standards and accountability. Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work. It's drawn from chapter 8 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.
Is this normal for my trade?
Across the 48 trades that publish a figure, net profit at $1M to $5M averages 7% before taxes. If you're well under that and this page describes your month, the two are usually the same story. The published average tells you where the pack is, and your own job costing tells you where you are, which is the number that pays payroll.
Where do I start?
Ask three foremen what they enter today and where, and count how many times the same hours or quantities are typed.
Why doesn't my crew use our construction software?
Most often it asks people to enter the same thing twice. The field enters hours in one place and the office retypes them in another, so the field stops. Software that takes one entry and puts it everywhere gets used.
How do I get my foremen to enter time and quantities?
Make it one entry a day on the screen they already open. Show them the schedule and the daily first, and the entries come with it. Count who enters each week and thank the ones who do.
What do I do with software my company paid for and doesn't use?
Find out whether the problem is the tool or the setup. If it has an open API, CFOS can connect to it so the office keeps what works. If it doesn't, you can move to CFOS month to month and cancel anytime.
Can I fix this without touching anything else?
You can try, and it doesn't hold. Step 08 depends on step 03, overhead calculation and step 06, project management and step 07, monthly cadence. Install it ahead of those and it produces numbers the field won't trust, which is worse than the problem you started with.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.