Cost to date against budget

Cost to date is what the job has actually cost so far. Against the budget, it tells you whether the estimate is holding up — but only if you read it carefully, because the obvious comparison is misleading.

The trap

Cost to date against total budget tells you almost nothing on its own.

A job that has spent 45% of the budget is doing well if it is 60% built and badly if it is 30% built. The spend figure alone cannot distinguish those, and the difference is the entire question.

You need three things together:

	From
Allowed	The BOQ
Committed	Purchase orders
Actual	Expenses

Plus a view of how much is actually built.

Read it by trade, not by job

The job-level total hides everything. A trade $4,000 over and another $4,000 under look like a job on budget, and they are two separate problems.

Turn on Show Actual Costs Columns in the BOQ and read it by cost center.

Worked example

The Hendricks job at frame stage:

Trade	Allowed	Committed	Actual	Built?
Preliminaries	$12,400	$9,200	$8,640	Ongoing
Site works	$8,900	$9,340	$9,340	Complete
Concrete	$9,784	$7,576	$7,938	Complete
Framing	$34,200	$34,200	$18,900	Complete
Roofing	$18,600	$19,850	$0	Not started
Total	$83,884	$80,166	$44,818

Four separate readings:

Site works is $440 over and complete. Closed out, over budget. Note it for next time.

Concrete is $362 over the order. See Matching to an order — the waiting time.

Framing is complete but only half invoiced. The carpenter’s final invoice is coming. This is the most dangerous line on the table, because the actual column makes the trade look under budget when it is exactly on it.

Roofing is committed $1,250 over before a tile has been laid. The best line on the table — the overrun is visible before the work starts, so there is still time to do something about it.

Committed is the early-warning number

Actual tells you what has happened. Committed tells you what is about to.

The roofing line above is the whole argument for raising orders: a $1,250 overrun that is visible while you can still renegotiate, re-scope or accept it deliberately, rather than discovering it in an invoice.

Work complete but not invoiced is the most common misreading

A trade that is finished and half invoiced looks under budget. It is not — the rest of the invoice is coming. Always read the actual column alongside whether the work is actually done.

Where to look

Where	Gives you
BOQ with actual cost columns	Item and trade detail
Costing metrics on the Projects list	Job-level cost against budget
Expenses list	Everything charged, by supplier and date

A monthly routine

1. Open the BOQ with actual cost columns on.
2. Read down by trade, not by total.
3. For each trade, ask: is it built, and does the spend match?
4. Flag anything where committed exceeds allowed — act now.
5. Flag anything where actual exceeds committed — query the invoice.
6. Check whether trades that are complete are fully invoiced.

Fifteen minutes. Step six is the one that stops a job looking profitable right up until the last invoices land.

Feeding it back

The most valuable output is not this job — it is the next one. A trade that runs over on three jobs running is a rate that needs changing in your price list, not bad luck.

That is the argument for keeping finished jobs archived rather than deleted: your own cost history is the best pricing data available to you.