Job costing software for concrete flatwork contractors
Flatwork is sold by the square foot and the lineal foot, and it's poured on a lot of small jobs in a week. CFOS for QuickBooks costs each pour's mix, crew and equipment to the job. You see what a driveway or a parking lot cost.
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How concrete flatwork bills and where the money leaks
Flatwork is priced by the square foot for slabs, drives, walks and patios, and by the lineal foot for curb and gutter. Commercial lots and city sidewalk work go on a schedule of values with a monthly pay app and retainage. Residential and builder work is often billed per lot or on completion, so a crew can pour five jobs in a week and the office invoices them one at a time.
The money leaks between the bid and the truck. A slab poured a little thick, a subgrade that needs more base, or a soft spot dug out the morning of the pour all add yards and hours that the square foot price doesn't cover. Short load fees, hot and cold weather charges, and a truck that waits past its allowed unloading time come in on the plant's statement weeks later.
Weather and callbacks are the rest. A pour canceled at six in the morning still costs the crew's time and sometimes a canceled load. Cracked or scaled panels come back as remove and replace work, and unless they're coded to the job that caused them, the cost ends up in overhead.
How concrete flatwork costs split and what CFOS tracks
A flatwork job spends on subgrade and base, forms and form setting, mesh or rebar, ready-mix, placing and finishing labor, saw cutting and sealing, and sometimes a pump or a conveyor. On most jobs the crew and the concrete are the two biggest numbers. Each pour should show both, because a job can lose money on yards or on hours and the fix is different.
CFOS reads your jobs, cost codes and vendors from QuickBooks Online and compares actual cost to your estimate by cost code, updated every hour. Ready-mix tickets and plant statements emailed to your bills inbox are read, coded to the job and checked against the PO. You compare the yards on the tickets to the yards in the estimate and see which pours took more concrete than you sold.
Your own skid steers, power trowels, curb machine and trucks get an equipment daily rate built from what they cost you to own. That rate is charged to the job each day the machine is on a daily. A small sidewalk job then pays for the trailer and the screed it used, and overhead stops absorbing the fleet.
Workflow from the field to the office
The foreman's daily lists the crew, the equipment, the pour and photos of the subgrade before the concrete goes down and the finished slab after. Field time is approved and goes to QuickBooks Payroll, coded to forming, placing or finishing. On a day with three small pours, each one is its own job or its own cost code, so the hours don't blur together.
When the builder adds a patio extension, the GC asks for a thicker apron, or the inspector wants more base, a T&M ticket goes on the daily. The GC or owner signs it on site, and it becomes a change order draft for the next pay app. The change orders page shows how numbers and revisions are kept.
Commercial jobs bill from the schedule of values, with square foot and lineal foot lines as unit price and the rest as lump sum. CFOS lays out the G702 and G703 with retainage. Pay app due dates send reminders to the PM, which helps when the flatwork is a small line on a big project and easy to forget.
What the owner sees every month
Each month the PM enters cost to complete on the open jobs and you approve it. The WIP schedule shows over and under billing by job, and a master WIP adds them up. For a flatwork company with dozens of small jobs, that's where you find the ones that finished, got paid and still have callbacks coming.
The CEO Report grades your gross margin, overhead and net profit before taxes against the published average for concrete flatwork and the CFOS target for your size. It tells you whether your square foot price covers what the work costs. A 13 week cash forecast reads your QuickBooks and pay apps and marks the lowest week, which helps when the plant wants payment and a builder pays on the draw.
AR aging and a collections list keep small residential invoices and held retainage from aging unnoticed. You can ask Claude or ChatGPT about your own jobs, such as which driveways went over on yards last month. It reads your numbers and can't change them.
Concrete flatwork cost codes, matched to QuickBooks
Each group below is one set of cost codes in CFOS. Bills, time and equipment post to them. QuickBooks keeps the books underneath, so your bookkeeper sees the same numbers.
| Cost code group | What goes on it |
|---|---|
| Subgrade and base | Fine grading, base stone, compaction and soft spot digouts found before the pour. |
| Forms and layout | Form boards, stakes, layout and form setting labor, plus stripping after the pour. |
| Mesh, rebar and dowels | Wire mesh, fiber, rebar, chairs and dowels at joints and tie-ins to existing slabs. |
| Ready-mix | Concrete by the yard from the plant, with short load, waiting time, and hot or cold weather charges coded to the pour. |
| Placing and finishing | Crew time to place, screed, float, trowel and broom, by pour. |
| Curb and gutter | Curb machine time and slipformed or formed curb, by the lineal foot. |
| Saw cutting, sealing and curing | Control joints, joint sealant, cure and seal, and blankets in cold weather. |
| Pump and conveyor | Pump or conveyor rental, or your own unit at its daily rate, for pours the truck can't reach. |
| ADA ramps and city work | Ramps, detectable warning panels, right of way permits and inspections. |
| Remove and replace | Demo and haul off of cracked or failed panels, tied to a change order when someone else caused the damage. |
How concrete flatwork contractors do, by revenue
Each row shows the all-trade average, this trade's average and the CFOS target where one is published. These are the numbers your own job costing gets graded against. Net profit is before taxes in every row.
| Revenue | Overhead | Gross margin | Net profit, before taxes |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1M to $5M | 15.1% all-trade average 14% Concrete flatwork 14.1% CFOS target | 22.1% all-trade average 22% Concrete flatwork 25% CFOS target | 7% all-trade average 8% Concrete flatwork 11% CFOS target |
| $5M to $10M | 14.1% all-trade average 13% Concrete flatwork 13.1% CFOS target | 23.4% all-trade average 23% Concrete flatwork 26% CFOS target | 9.4% all-trade average 10% Concrete flatwork 12.9% CFOS target |
| $10M to $25M | 13.1% all-trade average 12% Concrete flatwork 12.1% CFOS target | 24.6% all-trade average 24% Concrete flatwork 27.1% CFOS target | 11.5% all-trade average 12% Concrete flatwork 15% CFOS target |
| $25M to $50M | 12.1% all-trade average 11% Concrete flatwork | 25.7% all-trade average 25% Concrete flatwork | 13.7% all-trade average 14% Concrete flatwork |
Gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish by trade and size. Net profit is computed, not surveyed: net profit = gross margin minus overhead. Nothing comes out for taxes, interest or other income and expense, so it is a before tax figure, on the same basis as CFMA's net income before taxes.
CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. Gross margin minus overhead leaves out interest and other income and expense, so a figure here can come in a little above or below a reported net income on the same business.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Problems concrete flatwork contractors write to us about
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We email you when CFOS for QuickBooks opens, plus a few updates before then. Your address stays with Run On CFOS. One click unsubscribes.
30 days free, a 90-day money-back guarantee, and cancel anytime. It opens January 2027. We email you the day it opens.
What concrete flatwork contractors ask
How do I compare yards poured to the square feet I sold?
Ready-mix tickets and plant statements emailed to your bills inbox are coded to the job and checked against the PO. Your estimate imports as the budget by cost code, with the yards you planned. You compare actual yards and cost to the budget pour by pour.
Can I cost a week of small residential pours?
Yes. Set each pour up as its own job, or use a cost code for each lot under one builder job. The foreman's daily and approved time put labor and equipment on the right one. Each job shows its own margin.
What happens when a pour gets canceled for weather?
The foreman records the day on the daily with the crew and photos. The cost goes to its own cost code, so you see what weather costs you over a season. If the GC canceled for something on their side, a signed T&M ticket turns it into a change order draft.
How do I track callbacks for cracked panels?
Code remove and replace work to its own cost code or job, with photos on the daily. If another trade damaged the slab, a T&M ticket signed by the GC makes it a change order draft. If it's your own warranty work, you still see the cost on the job that caused it.
Does CFOS replace QuickBooks Online for my flatwork company?
No. QuickBooks Online keeps your books and CFOS works on top of it. It reads and writes jobs, cost codes, vendors, bills and invoices, so there's no migration.
- Job costing software that runs on QuickBooks
- One price. Every module. Priced by your revenue.
- Use all of it, or just the part you need
- Job costing software that runs on QuickBooks
- One price. Every module. Priced by your revenue.
- Use all of it, or just the part you need
- Concrete flatwork benchmarks
QuickBooks is a trademark of Intuit Inc. Run On CFOS isn't affiliated with Intuit.