INV-88213.pdf arrives in the shared inbox on Tuesday at 09:14. It is from the timber merchant, it covers two deliveries, and one of the lines is for a job you finished and invoiced a fortnight ago. If anyone matches it to that job, it happens at the end of the quarter, from memory.
Most workshops know their turnover and their total material spend. Very few know what a specific job cost in materials, because supplier invoices are posted as a lump to 'Materials' and that is that.
The system reads every supplier invoice that comes in. PDF attachments, photos of paper invoices, the ones that arrive as a link to a portal. It pulls out the supplier, the invoice number, each line, each quantity, each price, the VAT and the total.
Then it matches. First to the purchase order, if there was one, line by line, with a flag when the quantity or price differs from what was ordered. Then to the job, using the PO reference, your job number written in the delivery note field, or the materials list on the job itself when nothing else is there. An invoice for 14 sheets of birch ply three days before job 2041 was cut is a fairly safe match, and it shows you how sure it is.
The bill is posted to Xero or QuickBooks with the right account code and the job as a tracking category. Unmatched lines go to a short list for you to look at on Friday, usually four or five a week, usually sundries.
The result is a real materials figure per job, and you have it before the next similar quote goes out.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts. Which of your jobs this year made the least?