Breche for General Contractors

Job Costing Software That Tells You the Margin While You Can Still Fix It

Most GCs learn a project's real margin from their accountant, months after the last truck left. Breche builds the budget from your approved estimate and feeds actuals in as they happen — material receipts, GPS-verified labor hours, subcontractor invoices — so you see the margin move while the project is still running and decisions still matter.

14-day free trial — no credit card required

The problems this solves

Built for how this work actually runs

The pain

The budget lives in a spreadsheet that was accurate the day the contract was signed and never again.

What Breche does

The approved estimate becomes the project budget automatically — same sections, same line items, same numbers the client signed. There is no re-keying step where the budget and the contract quietly diverge, and when change orders land they extend the budget the moment they're signed.

The pain

Receipts pile up in the truck and get coded to jobs weeks late, if at all.

What Breche does

Log expenses against the project as they occur, categorized to match your cost structure. Because expense entry is tied to the job record rather than a month-end accounting push, cost reports reflect this week's lumber run — not a reconstruction of it in QuickBooks six weeks later.

The pain

Labor is the biggest cost on the job and the last one anybody can actually measure.

What Breche does

Field crews clock in on the mobile app with GPS verification, and approved hours flow into the project's labor actuals. You see real hours against the labor budget per project — which is how you catch the framing phase running 30% over while there's still a framing phase to manage.

The pain

Sub invoices arrive by email, get paid from memory, and surface at closeout as surprises.

What Breche does

Subs submit invoices through the vendor portal, tied to their project and scope. Every sub dollar is visible in project actuals from the day it's submitted — so committed cost stops being a number you assemble by searching your inbox for attachments.

The pain

Change orders get built and billed, but nobody adjusts the budget they were supposed to expand.

What Breche does

A signed change order extends the contract value and the budget in the same motion. Margin tracking always compares actuals to the full approved scope, so a project heavy with owner changes reads correctly instead of looking blown against its original number.

The pain

You can't say which project types make money and which just make revenue.

What Breche does

Closed-project profitability reports compare estimated to actual across your finished work. Patterns emerge fast — additions holding margin while bathroom remodels quietly bleed labor — and your next round of estimates gets priced from evidence instead of instinct.

How it works in Breche

From first step to money in the bank

  1. 1

    Approve the estimate, get the budget

    When the client signs, the estimate's sections and line items become the project's cost budget. Contract value, expected cost, and expected margin are on the record from day one.

  2. 2

    Capture actuals from three directions

    Expenses get logged against the job as receipts come in, crew hours arrive from the GPS time clock on the mobile app, and subcontractor invoices land through the vendor portal — each mapped to the project without a bookkeeping intermediary.

  3. 3

    Watch the margin, not the rearview mirror

    The project view shows budget versus actual and current margin in real time. Overruns show up as trends you can interrupt — reassign the crew, rebid the remaining scope, or write the change order the scope creep deserves.

  4. 4

    Close the loop at closeout

    When the project closes, its estimated-versus-actual record joins your profitability reporting, and the QuickBooks Online sync keeps the books aligned without double entry. Every finished job makes the next bid smarter.

FAQ

Job Costing FAQ

Common questions about job costing in Breche.

Three sources: expenses you log against the project (materials, permits, equipment, dump fees), labor hours from the GPS time clock in the mobile app priced at your rates, and subcontractor invoices submitted through the vendor portal. Together they form the project's actual-cost picture next to the budget from the approved estimate.

Ready to see it on your own jobs?

Start your 14-day free trial. No credit card required.

Start Free Trial