Electrical Job Costing Explained: Cost Codes, Labor Burden & Budget-vs-Actual

1. Cost codes: the buckets every cost lands in

A cost code is the account you charge labor, material, equipment, and subcontract costs against. For electrical work the codes should map to installation activities a foreman recognizes and a unit you can measure — not a generic "electrical" lump. A workable electrical structure:

• •26-050 Underground / duct bank (LF)
• •26-100 Branch conduit (LF)
• •26-110 Feeder conduit (LF)
• •26-120 Wire & cable pull (LF)
• •26-200 Devices & trim (EA)
• •26-300 Gear & panels (EA)
• •26-400 Lighting (EA)
• •26-500 Fire alarm / low voltage (EA / LF)
• •26-600 Controls & terminations (EA)

How granular should electrical cost codes be?

Granular enough that a blended overrun does not hide the one scope that is bleeding, but coarse enough that the field codes it correctly. The test: a cost code should map to a chunk of work a foreman can recognize and a quantity you can measure (LF pulled, devices set). If two codes always collect the same hours because nobody can tell them apart, make them one. If a code never gets used, drop it.

2. Labor burden: turning a wage into a true cost

Labor burden is everything you pay on top of base wage to put a worker on the job: payroll taxes, workers' comp, liability insurance, and benefits. Job costing on bare wage understates cost and overstates margin. The fully-burdened rate is what belongs in the cost report.

The math: Fully-burdened rate = base wage × (1 + burden rate). A representative breakdown for an electrical journeyman:

• •FICA / Medicare: ~7.65% of wage
• •Federal & state unemployment (FUTA/SUTA): ~1–3%
• •Workers' compensation (electrical class): ~3–8% (state-dependent)
• •General liability: ~1–2%
• •Benefits (health, retirement, training): varies widely
• •Typical total burden: ~25–45% on top of base wage

A labor-burden example

A journeyman at a $40.00 base wage with a 35% burden costs 40.00 × 1.35 = $54.00 per hour fully loaded. Cost a 1,000-hour scope at the $40 bare wage and you book $40,000; cost it correctly at $54 and it is $54,000. That $14,000 difference is the gap between a job you think made money and one that actually did. Always job-cost on the burdened rate.

3. Budget vs actual: the comparison that drives decisions

Budget-vs-actual sets the hours and dollars you estimated for each cost code against what you have actually spent, by code, as the work progresses. The earlier you see the variance, the more of the job you have left to recover it.

A simple per-code view partway through a scope:

• •Budget: 1,800 burdened hours for 26-100 branch conduit (4,000 LF @ 0.045 hr/LF).
• •Actual to date: 75 hours, 1,400 LF installed.
• •Earned hours: 1,400 × 0.045 = 63. Performance Factor = 63 ÷ 75 = 0.84 (≈19% over).
• •Projection: at 0.84, the 1,800-hour budget trends toward ~2,140 hours — a ~340-hour overrun, visible now with 2,600 LF still to install.

Why real time beats month-end

Accounting job costing is accurate but late — it tells you what a scope cost after the bills post, when the conduit is already in the wall. Field job costing captures hours and quantities by cost code as the work happens, so the 0.84 above shows up this week, while crew size, sequencing, or prefab can still change the outcome.

That requires the field to be the capture point: the daily report logs manhours and installed quantities against the same cost codes the estimate used, the burden is applied automatically, and budget-vs-actual computes itself. That is exactly how <a href="/electrical-job-costing-software">Field PM's electrical job costing</a> works — and the totals sync to the accounting system you already run, so it feeds Foundation, Sage, or QuickBooks rather than replacing them.