Controllers
Close the month on numbers the floor already posted, with every cost traceable back to the job, the operation and the transaction that made it.
Whether job costs, WIP and the ledger agree without a month of reconciliation.
A controller in a job shop spends the first week of every month proving that three things agree: what the floor says it did, what the jobs cost, and what the ledger says. In most shops they do not agree, because labor comes off a time clock, material comes off a receiving log, and WIP is a journal entry somebody computes once a month from a spreadsheet nobody else can follow. WorkCell posts cost as the work happens and stamps a Job cost object on every posting, so a job's cost and the ledger are the same records read two ways. Estimate against actual is readable while the job is still open rather than after it ships. What WorkCell does not do is automate revenue recognition, budgeting or bank reconciliation, and it is better that you hear that now.
The WIP number on the balance sheet is computed once a month from percent-complete guesses, a labor export and a stack of open purchase orders. It is defensible only because nobody can check it. When the auditor asks which jobs make up the balance, the answer takes two days to assemble and is different from the one given last quarter.
The job that ran three times the quoted hours is discovered at the review, by which point the same part has been quoted the same way four more times. The underlying arithmetic is well known on the floor: forty hours worked against thirty billed is a one-point-three-three factor, and nobody applies it because nobody records it.
Labor from one system, material from another, inventory from a count, and a general ledger in accounting software that knows nothing about jobs. Every month the same four exports get stitched together in the same workbook, and the only person who can defend the result is the one who built the workbook.
The burden rate in the quote has not moved since the last time machine rates were reviewed, even though headcount, utilities and insurance all have. A fully burdened rate that reflects what the shop actually costs to run is the number pricing depends on, and in most shops it is a legacy constant nobody owns.
You can get from a general ledger line to a batch, and from a batch to a spreadsheet, and then the trail ends. Walking a number back to the operator, the operation, the receipt and the lot requires the cooperation of three people and a filing cabinet, which makes every variance question into an investigation.
Cost posts as the work happens
Labor posts when an operator clocks off an operation, material posts when it is issued, and purchased cost posts on receipt. Every one of those postings carries a Job cost object, so job cost is accumulated by the transactions themselves rather than assembled from exports at the end of the period.
Estimate against actual while the job is open
The quote's estimate and the job's accumulated actual sit on the same record, by operation and by material line. A job going wrong is visible in week two rather than at the review, which is the only point in the cycle where anyone can still do something about it.
One ledger underneath the floor
General ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable are in the same database as the jobs, the receipts and the shipments. The entries that create a trial balance are the entries the operations side already made, so there is no interface to reconcile and no timing gap between the two sets of books.
Inventory valued in pieces, with conversion carried through
Material is tracked in pieces with unit conversion from the purchase unit, and foreign-currency purchases convert through to inventory value and job cost. The valuation on the balance sheet comes from the same quantities the floor counts rather than from a parallel costing sheet.
Every number walks back to its transaction
A cost on a job resolves to the posting that created it, and that posting resolves to the operator, the operation, the receipt, or the lot behind it. The audit trail is a property of how cost is recorded, not a report somebody has to build when the auditor asks.
QuickBooks Online in both directions
If you are keeping QuickBooks Online, the integration is bi-directional across the general ledger, invoices and bills, so the two systems do not drift. That is the only accounting integration that is live today. Everything else, Xero included, is roadmap rather than something you can switch on this quarter.
| Task | What Changes |
|---|---|
| Map your chart of accounts | Bring over the accounts you actually post to and decide where job cost, WIP and cost of sales land. This conversation takes an hour and it determines whether your trial balance is readable for the next five years, so it is worth having properly rather than accepting a default. |
| Open one job and read its cost | Pick a job that is running right now and look at what has posted against it: hours by operation, material issued, purchased cost received. The first time a controller sees that without asking anybody for an export is usually the moment the rest of the project gets easier to justify. |
| Compare estimate to actual on three jobs you already shipped | Take three jobs you know the history of and read the estimate against the actual. You will either confirm what you suspected about where the shop loses money or find something you did not know, and either outcome is worth more than the first month's subscription. |
| Read WIP as the sum of what is open | Instead of computing WIP from percent-complete, list the open jobs and the cost accumulated on each. That total is a balance you can defend line by line, and the difference between it and the number you have been booking is the most interesting figure in your first week. |
| Connect QuickBooks Online | If QuickBooks Online is staying, wire up the bi-directional connection for the general ledger, invoices and bills, and watch one invoice go across. You will know within a day whether your existing close process can stop including a manual re-keying step. |
General ledger, AP and AR on the same database as the jobs.
AnalyticsDashboards and reports built on the postings rather than on a nightly export.
ProductionWhere labor and material postings are created, by the people doing the work.
InventoryQuantities and valuation, with lot and serial detail behind every issue.
The person who needs the margin answer before the month closes, not after.
EstimatorsWhere the burden rate you set becomes the price the shop quotes.
Purchasing ManagersThe receipts and vendor invoices that land in your AP and on your jobs.
Machine ShopsHigh-mix work where job-level cost is the only margin number that means anything.
Do you value jobs at standard cost or actual cost?
Actual, as posted. Labor, material and purchased cost accumulate on the job from real transactions, and the quote's estimate is the comparison baseline rather than a standard cost layer with variance accounts behind it. If your current close depends on standard-to-actual variance accounting, say so early so we can be straight about the fit.
Does this replace QuickBooks or sit next to it?
Either. WorkCell has its own general ledger, AP and AR, so it can be the book of record. If you would rather keep QuickBooks Online, the integration is bi-directional for the general ledger, invoices and bills. Xero is not live. Those are the only two accounting paths that exist today.
How do you handle revenue recognition on a job that runs six months?
Manually, through your own journal entries. There is no percentage-of-completion engine and no automated revenue recognition in WorkCell today. What you get is a defensible cost-to-date per job, posted as the work happens, which is the input that recognition calculation needs. The policy and the entry stay yours.
If the ledger says forty thousand in WIP, can I see which jobs that is?
Yes. WIP is the accumulated cost on open jobs, and every amount in it resolves to a job, then to the posting, then to the operator, receipt or lot behind the posting. That is the question most shops cannot answer, and it is the one auditors ask first.
What accounting pieces are not in there yet?
No budgeting or forecasting, no fixed assets, no payroll, no bank feeds or reconciliation, no automated three-way match, and no consolidated multi-entity reporting. Those are real gaps, not roadmap euphemisms. If any one of them is load-bearing in your close today, WorkCell is not a complete replacement for your current stack.
Will my close actually get shorter, or does the work just move?
The part that gets shorter is reconciling operations to the ledger, because both come from the same postings rather than from four exports stitched together. Judgment work, accruals and your own review do not go away. Shops with the longest closes are usually the ones with the most reconciliation in them.
See it from your seat.
Tell us how your close runs today, which exports it depends on, and how WIP gets computed, and we will tell you straight which parts WorkCell removes.