By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does a job that looked profitable on the quote still leave the bank balance thin?
Because the quote was built right but the costs were not booked right. A bricklayer can price a job correctly, rate per thousand for the brickwork, a day rate for the labourer mixing and loading out, and still watch the margin disappear once the job is finished, because the costs never landed against that job in the accounts the same way the price did.
Picture a bricklayer who quotes a retaining wall and feature brickwork job with a solid rate per thousand on the face brick and a day rate for the labourer on scaffold. The job runs long because of two weather days and a late lintel delivery. The bricks and mortar get coded to cost of sales like always. The labourer's extra days and the scaffold hire for the weather delay get coded to general overhead, the same bucket as the ute, the phone bill and the shed rent. On paper the job still looks fine. In the bank account, it is not.
Why does pricing per thousand bricks and a day rate for labour on the same job cause the real mix up?
Because two pricing methods on one job make it easy for one of them to slip out of the job costing altogether. Brickwork priced per thousand gets tracked closely because that is the number every bricklayer watches. Labour priced by the day, and scaffold and weather costs sitting around it, often get treated as a background expense rather than a job cost.
Over a run of jobs, that mis-booking does not show up as one bad job. It shows up as overhead that creeps up every month without an obvious cause, and a gross profit margin on the brickwork that looks steady while the real result across the business quietly erodes. Many bricklayers put that down to rising brick prices or a slow builder on payment. The data usually says something else.
What number actually tells a bricklayer the truth about a job's margin?
The number that tells you the truth is the gross profit margin on each job once every cost that belongs to it, brickwork, mortar, the labourer's day rate, scaffold lift hire and any weather days paid, is attributed to that job and nowhere else. Checked job by job, not once a quarter when the accountant does the books.
This is not a calculation you need to run by hand every week. It is a habit of keeping your own data current enough that the margin on a retaining wall job or a subcontract run for a builder tells you the truth the moment the job closes, not months later when the activity statement lands. A price increase on brick or a day rate rise only protects your margin if the cost side is being tracked with the same discipline as the price side.
What changes when AI agents take over the job costing work?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, using your prices, your wording and your rules, so it can take on the costing and coding work without you having to sit down and do it. For a bricklaying business, that means the labourer's hours, the scaffold invoice and the weather day get attributed to the job they belong to, automatically, instead of drifting into general overhead because nobody had time to sort it properly.
This is what data first coaching means in practice. Instead of the owner explaining the business to a coach and starting from memory, AI agents keep the job data current so the real margin on a face brick job or a cavity wall is visible as the job runs, not discovered weeks later when the bank balance does not match what was quoted. The crew still does the brickwork. The system just stops the numbers lying to the owner.
Should a bricklayer keep the off-the-shelf costing app they already use?
Some off-the-shelf job costing and quoting tools suit a bricklaying business well, and the right move is often to keep what works rather than replace it for the sake of it. The problem is rarely the app itself. It is that most of these tools are built for every trade at once, so they do not naturally separate a rate per thousand brick cost from a day rate labour cost the way a bricklayer actually prices.
Rather than guessing, your own data shows which parts of your current system earn their place and which parts are quietly letting labour and scaffold costs sit in the wrong bucket. Some bricklayers are better served keeping their existing software and building an agent that sits on top of it to correct the job coding. Others are better served owning a system built around how their jobs and their builders actually pay. Either way, the decision should start from what the numbers show, not from which app looks newest.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from the bricklaying business's own numbers through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from the owner explaining the business from memory. For a question like this one, it looks first at how cost is actually being attributed between brickwork, labour, scaffold and weather, because that is usually where a thin result starts, not in the price that was quoted.
Greg has put it plainly: “That directly comes off of your profit margin.” The how, including the way the Academy helps a bricklayer build the right system around their own jobs and their own builders, is worked through inside the Academy, with other members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member for every member. It is built for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
