Job costing software for grading contractors
Grading is sold by the pad, the lot or the acre and checked to a tenth of a foot. CFOS for QuickBooks costs machine days, water trucks and rework to the job. You see which lots and phases made money.
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How grading bills and where the money leaks
Grading contracts come in a few forms. Commercial work is usually a lump sum or unit price for mass and fine grade to a building pad and parking area. Homebuilder and subdivision work is often priced per lot, with separate lines for rough grade, final grade and topsoil respread, billed as each lot is done.
The leaks are in the second and third trips. A builder's framers, plumbers and concrete trucks rut a finished lot, and the builder calls you back to fix it. A pad fails compaction because the soil was too wet, so the crew discs, dries and rolls it again. If the contract pays for each lot once, every callback is your cost.
Moisture is the other leak. The water truck works all day in dry months, and wet weather stops the job while machines wait. Neither one is on the pay app, so both have to be counted somewhere or they disappear into overhead.
How grading costs split and what CFOS tracks
A grading job spends on dozers, scrapers, motor graders, compactors and water trucks, the operators who work them, and survey work for staking or machine control models. Material costs are small next to equipment, apart from topsoil or select fill you import. That makes grading an equipment business, and equipment cost is the easiest one to lose track of.
CFOS reads your jobs, cost codes and vendors from QuickBooks Online and compares actual cost to your estimate by cost code, updated every hour. Each machine gets a daily rate built from what it costs you to own, and that rate is charged to the job each day it's on a daily. A motor grader that spends two extra weeks on fine grade is a cost on that job instead of a mystery in your equipment expense.
Set up cost codes by phase or by block of lots, and rough grade, fine grade, rework and water each get their own budget and actual. A subdivision can look fine overall while callbacks on one phase lose money. The phase view tells you where.
Workflow from the field to the office
The foreman's daily records the crew, the machines, the lots or areas worked and photos. Field time is approved by the PM and sent to QuickBooks Payroll. Operator hours and machine days go on the same cost code, so you see the full cost of a day on the motor grader.
When a builder's trades damage a finished lot, the foreman photographs it and puts a T&M ticket on the daily. The GC or the builder's superintendent signs it on site, and it becomes a change order draft for the next pay app. Rework that can't be billed still goes on its own cost code, so the number is in front of you at the next bid.
Survey and staking bills, fuel and any import fill come to your bills inbox by email. CFOS reads them, codes them to the job and checks them against the PO. On billing, the schedule of values can list each lot or phase as a unit price line, and CFOS lays out the G702 and G703 with retainage.
What the owner sees every month
Each month the PM enters cost to complete on every job and you approve it. The WIP schedule shows over and under billing, which tells you whether rough grade billed early is covering the fine grade and callbacks still to come. A master WIP puts every job on one page.
The CEO Report grades your gross margin, overhead and net profit before taxes against the published average for grading and the CFOS target for your size. It's the check on whether your price per lot or per acre covers a year of machine days. The 13 week cash forecast marks the lowest week from your QuickBooks and pay apps, which helps when a rainy month stops billing but the equipment payments keep coming.
AR aging shows which builders pay slowly and which lots are billed and unpaid. You can ask Claude or ChatGPT about any job, such as what callbacks cost on one subdivision. It reads your numbers and can't change them.
Grading 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 |
|---|---|
| Survey and machine control | Staking, grade checks, machine control model files and as-built surveys. |
| Clearing and topsoil strip | Strip, stockpile and the machine time to move topsoil out of the way. |
| Mass grading | Dozers, scrapers and compaction to balance cut and fill, with equipment daily rates. |
| Moisture conditioning | Water trucks, discing and drying to hit compaction. |
| Building pads | Pad grade, compaction, proof roll and the pad certification. |
| Lot grading | Rough and final grade per lot, coded by lot or block. |
| Fine grade | Motor grader time for parking, roads and slab subgrade to tolerance. |
| Topsoil respread and seed | Respreading topsoil, final dress and seeding or sod. |
| Rework and callbacks | Lots and pads redone after other trades or weather, tied to a signed T&M ticket when billable. |
| Weather and standby | Crew and machine days lost to rain, recorded on the daily. |
How grading 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 16% Grading 14.1% CFOS target | 22.1% all-trade average 18% Grading 25% CFOS target | 7% all-trade average 2% Grading 11% CFOS target |
| $5M to $10M | 14.1% all-trade average 15% Grading 13.1% CFOS target | 23.4% all-trade average 20% Grading 26% CFOS target | 9.4% all-trade average 5% Grading 12.9% CFOS target |
| $10M to $25M | 13.1% all-trade average 14% Grading 12.1% CFOS target | 24.6% all-trade average 22% Grading 27.1% CFOS target | 11.5% all-trade average 8% Grading 15% CFOS target |
| $25M to $50M | 12.1% all-trade average 13% Grading | 25.7% all-trade average 23% Grading | 13.7% all-trade average 10% Grading |
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 grading 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 grading contractors ask
Can I bill grading per lot and track cost per lot?
Yes. Set up the schedule of values with lots or blocks as unit price lines, and matching cost codes. The foreman's daily puts crew and machine time on the lots worked. You compare cost per lot to what you bid.
How do I get paid for lots the builder's trades tore up?
Photograph the damage on the daily and add a T&M ticket. The builder's superintendent or GC signs it on site, and it becomes a change order draft for the next pay app. If it isn't billable, the cost still goes on a rework code you can see.
How does CFOS charge motor grader and water truck time?
Each machine has a daily rate built from what it costs you to own. On every day it's on a daily for a job, that rate is charged to the job. Operator time from approved field time goes on the same code.
What about rain days when the crew can't grade?
Record the day on the daily with photos. The time goes on a weather or standby cost code, so you see what rain cost each job. The 13 week cash forecast shows what a wet month does to your cash.
Does CFOS replace QuickBooks Online for my grading company?
No. QuickBooks Online keeps the books, and CFOS works on top of it. It reads and writes jobs, cost codes, vendors, bills and invoices, so there's no migration and your bookkeeper keeps working where they work now.
- 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
- Grading benchmarks
QuickBooks is a trademark of Intuit Inc. Run On CFOS isn't affiliated with Intuit.