Job Expenses vs. General Expenses: How Solo Trade Contractors Track Both to Protect Project Margins

You buy $75 worth of copper pipes for a specific bathroom job. Later that week, you renew your van insurance for $300. Both are expenses. But they're not the same kind of expense. One affects the profit you made on a specific job. The other is overhead that keeps your business running. Most contractors lump them together. That's the mistake.

The two types of expenses

Every dollar you spend falls into one of two categories.

Job expenses are directly tied to a customer's project. The $75 in copper pipes you bought for Mrs. Henderson's bathroom job. The $120 in electrical wire for the Garcia house. The $300 you paid a subcontractor to help with the Miller deck. These costs exist because that specific job exists. If you hadn't taken the job, you wouldn't have spent the money.

General expenses are the costs of running your business regardless of which jobs you take. Van insurance. Fuel. Tool replacements. Office supplies. These expenses would exist even if you didn't do any jobs this week. They're overhead — the baseline cost of keeping your doors open.

The distinction matters because job expenses affect your profit margin on individual jobs. General expenses affect your overall business profitability. Mixing them together makes it impossible to know which jobs are actually making you money.

Why most contractors get this wrong

At the end of the month, most contractors add up all their expenses, subtract them from total revenue, and call the remainder "profit." That number tells you if your business made money overall. But it doesn't tell you which jobs were profitable and which ones ate into your margins.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

This tells you the business made $5,200 this month. But it doesn't tell you:

• Which of those 5 jobs were high-margin and which were low-margin
• Whether the $1,800 bathroom job was actually profitable after materials
• If you're underpricing certain types of work
• Which customers are worth taking again and which aren't

You just have one big number. And one big number doesn't help you make better decisions on the next job.

The right way: Track job expenses separately

When you separate job expenses from general expenses, you can see the real margin on every single job.

Now you know: the Henderson job made you $505 after materials. That's an 87% margin. You can compare this to other jobs and see which types of work are genuinely profitable.

Meanwhile, your general expenses — van insurance, fuel, tool replacements — are tracked separately. They don't cloud your per-job profit numbers. You still account for them at the business level, but they don't distort what you actually made on individual jobs.

"Job expenses tell you what you made on a specific job. General expenses tell you what it costs to run your business. Both matter. But they answer different questions."

What belongs in each category

The test is simple: Would this expense exist if you hadn't taken this specific job? If the answer is no, it's a job expense. If the answer is yes, it's a general expense.

How this changes your pricing

When you track job expenses separately, you start to see patterns.

You notice that bathroom jobs consistently have higher material costs than you thought. You're charging $800 but spending $200 on parts — a 75% margin. Meanwhile, your water heater replacements are $1,200 with only $150 in parts — an 87.5% margin.

That information tells you something useful: you're underpricing bathroom work relative to water heater jobs. You need to either raise your bathroom rates or find ways to reduce material costs. Without job-level expense tracking, you'd never spot this.

Or you realize that a certain repeat customer always requests last-minute changes that require extra material runs. The job looks profitable at first — $900 charged, $100 in initial materials. But after two extra trips to the supply store for additional parts, you're at $250 in materials and your margin dropped from 89% to 72%. That customer is less profitable than you thought.

Job-level expense tracking shows you these patterns in real time. Not at tax time when it's too late to adjust. Right now, while you're still quoting the next job.

How CashWrench tracks both

In CashWrench, when you log an expense, you choose: Job Expense or General Expense.

Job Expenses get linked to a specific customer and job. The moment you log the expense, CashWrench updates the profit screen for that job. You see immediately what you actually made after materials.

General Expenses don't get tied to a specific job. They're tracked separately as business overhead. You can categorize them — Fuel, Tools, Insurance, Vehicle, Phone, Office, Other — so you know where your overhead dollars are going.

The $75 you spent on copper pipes is not the same as the $300 you spent on van insurance. One tells you if the Henderson job was profitable. The other tells you what it costs to keep your business running. Track them separately. Know the difference. Price accordingly.

— The CashWrench Team

See your real profit on every job.

Track job expenses and general expenses separately. Know exactly what you made after materials, not just what you charged. No credit card to start.