True Cost to Profit - Bid Planning & Job Profit Workbook (Professional Edition)

Most bids are built from the money that leaves the bank account — and that number is always smaller than what a job really costs. Your own time. Wear on equipment you already paid for. The share of overhead the job consumes. The risk you carry until the final check clears. True Cost to Profit builds those numbers into the price, then follows the job all the way to a printed profit report.

Three questions, in the order a contractor faces them

• What should I bid? A complete cost build-up — labor burden, materials with waste and freight, subs, a defensible hourly rate for owned equipment, fuel and mobilization, site costs, overhead, and risk-scored contingency — grossed up to a break-even price and a recommended bid. Ten pre-submit checks turn to OK or a specific warning as you enter the bid.
• Where does the job stand? The Cost to Complete tracker compares spending against production, not just budget — "69% spent, 57% built" gets flagged in week one, in plain English. Change orders carry approved, billed, and paid as three separate states.
• Did it actually make money? Estimated vs Actual answers two different questions: did you bid the original scope right, and did you manage the job you ran. The workbook names the largest overrun, splits labor misses into hours vs pay rate, and prints a one-page profit report with a lessons-learned block.

What's inside — 24 linked tabs

Set up: Start Here · Company Rates · Job Setup · Production
Estimate: Labor · Materials · Subcontractors · Owned Equipment · Rental Equipment · Fuel, Travel & Mobilization · Site Costs · Overhead · Contingency
Price it: Bid Summary
Run the job: Job Cost Log · Cost to Complete · Change Orders · Billing
Close it out: Est vs Actual · Profit Report · AI Summary
Reference: Dashboard · Lists · Definitions

Built like a tool, not a form

• Fill Company Rates once — save it as your master template, copy it for every job
• Protected formulas, no password. Your file, your call
• One source of actual cost, so reports can never disagree with each other
• On QuickBooks? One summary line per category, once a month, is all it needs
• AI Summary tab with clean labeled values and eight working prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot
• Ten-minute quick bid path for small jobs: five tabs, then stop

Why $67

One unpriced rain day. One machine bid as if it were free. One change order worked on a handshake. Any one of them costs more than this workbook — and it only has to be right once.

Honest limits

Built and tested for Microsoft Excel on desktop or laptop. Not built for phones, and some features will not survive Google Sheets. One workbook per job. This is an estimating and organizational tool — not accounting, tax, legal, engineering, or insurance advice.