Available in Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher.

Using Cost Types with Cost Codes in Phases

Setting up a job ID with phases

Setting up a job ID with phases and cost codes

Using job reports

Set up a job

Set up job cost codes

Set up job phases

Perform other job costing tasks

Read the job costing overview

You define cost codes so you can choose any level of detail you want when you define them. However, cost types are five standard categories available for assigning to a cost code in the Maintain Cost Codes window. You can use cost types as buckets, where you can store similar cost codes. For example, if you wanted to group miscellaneous items in a job or a job phase (such as transportation charges) or permit charges, you could simply use the Other cost type and not use cost codes for a phase. If you did want to track individual tasks, you could follow the example below.

Suppose you are a building contractor. You can divide the cost of renovating a building into phases that represent consecutive stages of your job such as:

Job ID: Res001 (Residential: unit 1)

Phase ID	Description
P01-Site	Site Work
P02-ShRk	Sheet-Rock
P03-Elec	Electrical

Within each phase, you can have a task for which you want to track both labor and material. Since your expenses may be high in both of these areas, each one's cost can impact your overall profit. You could then create cost codes for tracking the cost of such tasks. Since cost codes will be available for all phases, it would be best to create them such that each applies to more than one cost type. You should create cost codes as follows:


Cost Code	Description
010-Labor	Labor Costs
020-Material	Raw Materials
030-Equipment	Equipment Cost
040-Surfaces	Surfaces
050-Permits	Permits & Licenses

Notes: These cost codes would help you categorize different items within one generic cost code for more than one phase. You could assign items such as Sand, Rock, and Gravel to 020-Material in the Site work phase, and you could assign cost of wires, bulbs, and sockets to 020-Material in the Electrical phase.

These cost codes could be applied to more than one cost type. For example, you can incur costs on Labor for Surfaces and costs on Material for Surfaces. You could then use the Surfaces cost code and assign the Labor or Material cost type as needed. By doing this you would be able to track how much you spent on labor on finishing surfaces during site work and how much on raw material. Similarly, you could create useful cost-code and cost-type combinations for the Sheet-Rock and Electrical phases as follows:

Phase ID	Cost Code	Cost Types
P02-ShRk (Sheet-Rock)	040-Surfaces	Labor
	040-Surfaces	Material
P03-Elec (Electrical)	010-Labor	Labor
	020-Material	Material
	050-Permits	Other