Blog / Job costing
Job costing
10 articles on job costing.
Aug 23, 2026
GPS Time Clock for Traffic Control Crews: What to Know Before You Roll One Out
Why time tracking is unusually hard in traffic control, what geofencing does and does not prove, how clock data feeds job costing and payroll, and how to introduce it without losing your crews.
Aug 23, 2026
Overtime and FLSA Basics for Traffic Control Crews
Why night work, standby, and travel make overtime unusually easy to get wrong in this trade — the 40-hour rule, what the regular rate includes, and the federal contract layer on top.
Aug 23, 2026
The Numbers a Traffic Control Owner Should Actually Watch
A short, defensible KPI set for a traffic control company — what each number tells you, how each one gets gamed, where the data has to come from, and which popular metrics are noise.
Jul 26, 2026
Job Costing for Traffic Control Companies
How to build a job cost that actually reflects a traffic control job — the four cost buckets, why equipment-days are the one most companies get wrong, how to allocate the overhead that does not attach to any job, and the reports worth running weekly.
Jul 26, 2026
Per Diem and Travel Pay for Traffic Control Crews
How per diem and travel pay actually work for out-of-area traffic control work — the IRS substantiation methods and current rates, why travel time and per diem are separate questions, and how to price and record both without creating a payroll problem.
Jul 25, 2026
Crew Utilization: The Metric Most Traffic Control Companies Don't Track
Wage rates are known to the penny and utilization not at all — which is backwards, because utilization moves the economics harder and management can actually change it.
Jul 25, 2026
What an Hour of Flagger Time Actually Costs: Building a Loaded Labor Rate
Base wage is the smallest part. Here is how to build a defensible loaded hourly cost for field labor — burden, non-productive time, utilization, prevailing wage, and the admin tail nobody prices.
Jul 25, 2026
How to Price Traffic Control Device Rental Rates
Device rental pricing is an asset-return problem, not a market-matching exercise. Here is how to build a rate from replacement cost, utilization, and loss — and why most published rates are unusable.
Jul 25, 2026
QuickBooks and Traffic Control Software: What to Get Right
Most traffic control companies keep the books in QuickBooks and run operations somewhere else. Here is where that seam leaks — and the four questions to ask before you connect anything.
Jul 21, 2026
Bidding Traffic Control Jobs: What Estimates Usually Miss
How traffic control estimates go wrong — the costs that hide outside the device count, why mobilization and standby are underpriced, and how job costing turns bidding into something you can improve.