Written by JD Davenport, who still sells for a living.
You finished the job, you got paid, and you still could not say whether you made money on it. Most people in the trades find out at tax time, once a year, on a number that covers everything at once. This tells you per job, this week.
One row per job: what you quoted, what you collected, what it cost you. Twelve tests that catch the money going out the door, a register for what they find, a rate card, and a list of the things your estimates keep missing. Surfaced runs those twelve tests on a pasted bank or card export in about a minute. The workbook comes in two editions, one for a business where nobody is paid a share of the job and one with a sales team.
| File | What it is | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| 00 START HERE | What to open first, in what order, and what breaks if you skip a step. | You install it in the right order instead of opening four files at once and finishing none of them. |
| 01 Why You Cannot Tell Which Jobs Made Money | The reasoning. The document you hand a partner who thinks the books are fine. | You can hand somebody the argument instead of having it. If they disagree with this, nothing after it would have stuck anyway. |
| 02 The Reconciliation Standard Word, editable | The twelve tests every dollar you paid out has to pass. | A payment nobody checked stops being possible rather than merely unlikely. |
| 03 The Exception Register Spreadsheet | One row per payment that did not reconcile, what failed, and what it would take to close it. | The things that did not reconcile stop living in somebody's head. One row, one owner, one date, and a number you can total. |
| 04 The One-Day Audit Run Sheet Word, editable | Eight phases in order, with what comes out of each. Hand it to whoever runs the day. | You get a whole year reconciled in a day by somebody who is not you, because the day is written down phase by phase. |
| 05 The Job Cost Workbook - one person Spreadsheet | The centerpiece, for a business where nobody is paid a share of the job. | You find out which jobs made money this week rather than at tax time, on one number that covers everything at once. |
| 05 The Job Cost Workbook - with a sales team Spreadsheet | The same workbook with the pay machinery in it: rate, earned, withheld. | The same, plus the pay machinery, so the figure a salesperson is paid on is the figure the job actually made. |
| 06 The Flag Vocabulary Word, editable | Every flag the workbook can raise, what it means, and what closes it. | Two people looking at the same flag reach the same conclusion. An argument about what a word means is an argument nobody wins. |
| 07 The Crew Rate Card Spreadsheet | What you agreed to pay each payee per unit, and when that price came into force. | What you agreed to pay stops being a memory. A rate that drifted upward shows up as a line rather than as a worse year. |
| 08 The Estimating Gap List Spreadsheet | Every time the built job was not the priced job, and whether the fix held. | The same thing stops being missed off estimates, because a gap that was fixed and came back is visible as exactly that. |
| 09 Running The Day - a guide for whoever does it | Four minutes, for whoever runs the audit. Hand it out. | The audit stops being a thing only you can run. |
| 10 Surfaced (the app) Browser tool | Paste a payment ledger, it runs the twelve tests in your browser and hands back the register. | A year of payments gets the twelve tests in about a minute, in your browser, without anything being uploaded anywhere. |
| 11 The Audit - how to audit any part of your business | The book. The method behind the kit, at full length. | You can point the method at anything else in the business once job cost is running. |
| 12 Shared Definitions | The same vocabulary in every kit, so any two of them work together. | Buy a second kit later and it drops in beside the first. No reconciling two sets of words. |
| LICENSE AND DISCLAIMER Text | One business, yours forever. Nothing expires. | Nothing renews, and no decision of ours can ever switch it off. |
| RUN IT WITH AI - copy this prompt Text | Runs the recurring pass with you, reading the queue the spreadsheet produced. | The monthly pass happens even in a month when you do not feel like doing it, because somebody else is asking the questions. |
| SET UP WITH AI - copy this prompt Text | Interviews you and fills the kit in around your business. | You answer questions for twenty minutes instead of reading a manual, and get back a setup sheet for your own business. |
The Audit is in this kit. It is file 11, the whole book, the same file sold on its own for $19. Buying The Job Cost Standard gets you the book and the tools that run the method. What the book is.
Not sure this is the one that is costing you? Compare all four kits, or read the questions people ask about this one.