Free Construction Job Costing Spreadsheet Template (Excel)

Here's a free construction job costing spreadsheet that actually works the way contractors do. No email gate, no "starter version." Download the Excel template here — it opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.

What's in it

• Job Summary tab— your contract price, budget by category (labor, materials, subs, permits & fees, equipment, overhead), actuals pulled automatically, variance per line, and a live profit and margin % at the bottom.
• Cost Log tab — one row per cost: date, vendor, category, amount, job, notes, and a reimbursable flag. The Summary tab totals it with SUMIF — no formulas to write.
• How-to tab — the five rules that make it work, starting with the only one that really matters: log every cost the day it happens.

How to use it without hating it

Make one copy per job. Enter your bid numbers in the Budget column before the job starts — that's your line in the sand. Then the discipline part: every receipt, every sub payment, every dump fee goes in the Cost Log the day it happens. The margin cell updates itself. If it drops under what you bid, you'll know while there's still time to do something about it — that's the entire point of job costing.

Where spreadsheets stop working

I'll be straight with you, because I lived it: the spreadsheet works exactly as long as the entering happens. One job, maybe two — fine. At three-plus active jobs the receipts start winning. Mine did; one $42,000 bathroom quietly dropped from 30% margin to 12% on receipts that never got logged.

When you hit that point, the fix is capture that doesn't depend on your evening energy: snap the receipt and AI files it to the job, automatically, categories and all. Job Cost Pro is free on the App Store — 3 projects, 50 receipts a month, no credit card. Get it here. Until then: the spreadsheet above, one copy per job, logged daily. It beats guessing by a mile.