Construction Job Costing & WIP Billing

The problem this solves

Construction accounting asks NetSuite for something it does not natively do: recognise revenue on a job before the job is finished, and bill it on a schedule that has nothing to do with when costs were incurred.

The symptoms are consistent across contractors. Job costs land against a project, but not against a cost code and cost type structure that the estimator and the project manager both recognise, so budget-versus-actual is reconstructed monthly in a spreadsheet. Percentage of completion is calculated in that same spreadsheet and posted as a manual journal, which means the earned-revenue and over/under-billing figures on the balance sheet are a hand-built estimate that nobody can drill into. Progress billing applications are typed into a separate document because NetSuite's invoice does not carry scheduled values, previous applications, stored materials and retainage in the shape the owner or general contractor requires. Retainage held on both receivable and payable sides sits in memo fields. And change orders — the single biggest driver of margin erosion — are tracked by email until someone notices the contract value on the record is wrong.

This build puts all of that on NetSuite records. It is built to order: ECOSIRE scopes your cost code structure, revenue recognition method, billing formats and retainage terms, quotes a fixed price, then builds and deploys into your account.

What ECOSIRE builds

Cost code and budget structure

A cost code custom record and a cost type list (labour, material, subcontract, equipment, other) are added and linked to the project record, with a job budget child record holding original budget, approved change orders and revised budget per code and type. Custom segments are used where you want cost codes to post to the general ledger natively, so a cost code is available as a GL dimension on journal entries, vendor bills, expense reports and time entries rather than existing only in a project sub-record.

Actual cost capture is wired at the transaction level: purchase orders, vendor bills, item receipts, time entries, expense reports and inventory issues all carry cost code and cost type on the line, validated by a User Event script against the job's budget structure so mis-coded cost is caught at entry rather than at month end.

WIP and percentage-of-completion revenue

A Map/Reduce script computes, per job and per period, cost to date, estimated cost at completion, percent complete (cost-to-cost by default; units-complete or a manual PM override where your policy requires it), earned revenue, and the resulting over-billing or under-billing position. The results are written to a WIP schedule custom record — one row per job per period, retained so the schedule is a history, not a recalculation — and posted to your nominated WIP, earned revenue, over-billing and under-billing accounts as a period journal entry.

Because the calculation lives on records rather than in a spreadsheet, the WIP schedule drills through to the transactions that produced each number, which is exactly what your surety and your auditor will ask for.

Progress billing

A billing application custom record models the schedule of values: line items, scheduled value, work completed this period, work completed previously, stored materials, total completed and stored to date, percent complete, balance to finish and retainage held. A Suitelet drives the application entry screen, and on approval a NetSuite invoice is generated with the correct net amount while the application retains the full detail. Application numbering, continuation-sheet detail and printed output are configured to match the format your owners and general contractors actually accept.

Retainage

Receivable retainage is held on a dedicated account rather than being buried in the invoice, tracked per job and per application, with a release process that generates the retainage invoice when the milestone or completion condition you define is met. Payable retainage on subcontractor bills is handled symmetrically, so what you withhold from subs and what is withheld from you are both reportable, per job, at any date.

Change orders

A change order custom record carries status (pending, approved, rejected), cost and revenue impact by cost code, and an approval route in SuiteFlow. Approval updates the revised budget and the contract value on the project in a single controlled step and writes an audit trail, so the contract value on the job record is always the sum of the original contract plus approved change orders — with pending change orders reportable separately for forecasting.

Reporting and integration

Saved searches and dashboard portlets cover job profitability by cost code, WIP schedule by job, over/under billings, retainage receivable and payable ageing, committed cost (open POs and subcontracts) and cost at completion trend. RESTlets expose job cost and billing data to a field time-capture app, an estimating system or a project management tool through SuiteTalk REST.

Who this is for

General contractors, specialty subcontractors and design-build firms running NetSuite who recognise revenue over time and bill progressively. It fits firms whose accounting policy is already defined — the build encodes your percent-complete method and retainage terms, it does not choose them. Firms billing purely time-and-materials with no WIP position will use only part of it.

How delivery works

1. Scoping call. We review your cost code and cost type structure, your percent-complete policy, the billing formats your owners require, retainage terms on both sides and your change order approval chain against your live NetSuite configuration — subsidiaries, projects, roles and existing project records. 2. Fixed quote. A written scope and a fixed price before any code is written. 3. Build. SuiteScript 2.1 in an SDF project: User Event validation, Map/Reduce WIP computation, Scheduled period jobs, Suitelet billing screens, custom records, custom segments and SuiteFlow approvals. 4. Install in sandbox. Deployed to your sandbox first, where you run a full period close on real job data — cost coding, WIP calculation, a billing application and a retainage release — before production is touched. 5. Production. The tested bundle is installed in production, with a documented rollback path and a cutover plan for jobs already in progress. 6. Support. A defect-fix window after go-live covers the first live period close.

Typical delivery is one working week from signed scope. Jobs in progress at cutover need opening WIP and prior-application balances loaded; that migration is scoped explicitly rather than assumed.