The joinery is the trade with a double workplace: what’s sold is made first in the workshop, then at the customer’s home. It’s exactly at this seam between production and installation that hours disappear, and with them the margin on custom work.
Costing custom work: honest job costing
The built-in wardrobe sold for CHF 8’500. But what did it cost? Without clean numbers, nobody knows: board material, fittings, CNC time, bench time, two installation trips, a redelivery because of a warped front panel. If you log workshop and installation hours separately per job and assign materials, a pattern emerges after ten jobs: which type of job pays its way, and which one your customers are effectively subsidising. This job costing is the raw material for better quotes and an hourly rate that genuinely covers workshop rent and machinery.
The job path without paper
- Measuring at the customer’s: measurements, photos, sketches go straight into the project instead of a notebook.
- Quote: built from the description and your line items, with clear boundaries (who fills, who paints, who disposes). For custom pieces with a high material share, an advance payment at order placement belongs in the quote, since the board material invoice arrives long before installation.
- Workshop: hours logged against the job, not against “workshop, general.” This is the only point where job costing actually happens.
- Installation: clock in at the customer’s, log time-and-materials work (the extra plinth, adjusting for an out-of-plumb wall) right away, record handover with a photo and signature, important for later warranty questions with wood that moves.
- Invoice: from the quote plus time-and-materials work, with a QR payment slip, advance payment deducted transparently.
In MeisterOffice, this path is a single flow of data; the joinery page shows it in detail.
What makes the workshop different
- Machine hours cost more than hand hours. If your hourly rate doesn’t reflect the CNC machine and edge bander, you give away money on every job. Use two rates (bench/machine) or one honest blended rate.
- Leftover material is capital. Half a board from the last job belongs as a material line item on the next one, not in the forgotten pile.
- Apprentices produce too. Their hours need to be logged and costed appropriately; more on this in the guide Apprentices in a trade business.
Does it pay off?
A joinery with four people that together recovers just two unlogged time-and-materials hours a week, and sends one more quote on the day of the site visit, pays for the software many times over (pricing). The bigger win is strategic: after six months of job costing, you know which jobs to take, and which ones you can happily leave to the competition.