Job costing for concrete polishing contractors

Polishing jobs are priced by the square foot, but the costs that decide the margin don’t scale neatly with square footage: tooling wear on a hard slab, extra passes to hit the sheen the spec calls for, and travel crews living in hotels. JobMargin’s Concrete Polishing setup gives each of those costs its own place.

What polishing contractors track in JobMargin

• Tooling as its own cost. Diamond tooling wear depends on the slab, not just the square footage. Track it separately and you’ll see which floors eat tooling, and price the next one to match.
• Materials by the pallet. Densifier, guard, dye, and joint filler post to the job as receipts come in.
• Travel crews. Hotel, parking, and per diem for crew and superintendent each get their own category, so out-of-town jobs show their real cost.
• Scope by grit level and area. Bid line items by the square foot, like “Grind & polish to 800 grit” or “Densify only, dock apron,” and those lines become the job’s scope.
• Night and phased work. Crew clock-ins by job keep hours straight when crews work nights around an operating store or warehouse.

Set up for polishing from the first day

When you pick Concrete Polishing as your trade, JobMargin loads these cost categories for budgets, receipts, and job costs. You can rename or add your own at any time.

• Overhead
• Labor
• Materials Warehouse
• Supplies
• Fuel
• Hotel
• Parking
• EE Per Diem
• Super Per Diem
• Tooling
• Other

Bid line items use the units polishing actually bid in: square feet (SF), square yards (SY), linear feet (LF), each (EA), and lump sum (LS).

Example: what a polishing job looks like mid-way

About 200,000 sq ft: main warehouse polished to 800 grit, dock apron densified, office slab cream-polished. The crew is on per diem, and the main floor is about 60% done.

Labor and travel are tracking with progress, but tooling is 77% spent with the main floor about 60% done. That slab is harder on diamonds than the bid assumed, which is worth knowing now and worth pricing into the next job for this customer.

Guides and tools for polishing contractors