A job is not a quote: it is a quote, two invoices, six materials receipts and three hours everyone forgot. The job file holds them together.
Today
With Bilto
You create the file with the first quote, or attach an existing quote to it.
Invoices and expenses attach themselves as the job goes, and you log the hours.
The file shows what came in, what went out, and what is really left.
An accepted quote becomes a deposit invoice, then a final invoice, with six materials receipts in between. As long as those documents live in separate lists, nobody knows what the job earned. The file is the object that links them, and it is the only way to get an honest figure.
Three things you used to look for in three places.
The job's quote, invoices and expenses, together.
The hours spent and your hourly rate, specific to the file if needed.
What was said on site, dated, in the file.
Most software stops at purchases. But what eats a margin is time: the two hours of rework, the morning spent waiting, the extra trip. The file carries the hours spent and an hourly rate that can be its own, because a difficult job is not billed like an easy one.
What the client asked for along the way, the change agreed verbally, the date the subcontractor came. Those dated notes are useless for six months, then they settle a dispute in thirty seconds. They are in the file, not in a notebook rattling around the van.
The dashboard ranks your job files by margin: the one that pays, the one that costs, the one to stop accepting. That is the information that changes the next quotes you write.
Real margin
materials AND labour, not just the purchases
No, a file belongs to a single client. That is what keeps the calculation readable: one margin per job, for one identified client.
No. A quote can live without one, and many do not need it. The file earns its place when a job drags on, splits into several documents, or costs more than planned.
By hand, on the file, when you think of it. It is not a time clock: it is a total you adjust, because an approximate total beats no total at all.
Each one answers a precise moment of the job, from the first phone call to the money in the bank.