🚫 Why are bank feeds not a good idea for tracking job costs?

Bank feeds can be helpful for general bookkeeping, but they are not a good idea for tracking job costs in construction accounting, especially for custom home builders. Here's why:

🔧 1. Too Late to Be Useful for Job Costing

Bank feeds show transactions after money moves — too late to accurately assign costs to jobs. By the time a charge shows up:

  • You may not remember what it was for.

  • You might not have supporting documents (like invoices or POs).

  • It becomes guesswork to assign it to the right job or cost code.

📂 2. Lack of Detail for Job Costing

Bank feeds typically include only:

  • Vendor name

  • Date

  • Amount

That’s not enough for job costing, where you need:

  • Job name or lot number

  • Phase or cost code

  • Budget category

  • Description of the work or materials

Without that, you're left guessing — and guesswork leads to inaccurate job cost reports.

🧾 3. No Control or Accountability

Construction companies need to track committed costs using tools like:

  • Purchase Orders (POs)

  • Subcontract Agreements

  • Allowances

  • Selections

Bank feeds don’t track who approved the cost, whether it was budgeted, or if it’s over/under. That opens the door to:

  • Missing change orders

  • Overruns

  • Cost surprises

🏗️ 4. Construction Requires a Job-Centric System

Bank feeds are account-based (what’s in your bank), but construction accounting needs to be job-based:

  • What was spent per job

  • On which phase

  • Against which budget

A proper job costing system like CHS lets you enter costs up front, connect them to budgets, and track actual vs. budget in real time — before it hits the bank.

✅ Better Alternative: Enter Costs When You Commit

Instead of waiting for bank feeds, a better workflow is:

  1. Enter vendor bills, POs, or subs' draws with full job info.

  2. Record the check or payment tied to that cost.

  3. Let the bank feed be used just to verify that payments cleared — not to initiate job costing.

Bottom Line:

Bank feeds are reactive. Job costing needs to be proactive.
For construction, especially custom homes, it’s critical to manage costs as they happen — not after the fact.

CHSSupport@chsontheweb.com