You raise a purchase order for a subcontractor — let's say $80,000. The job gets done. Then the invoices come through: $82K, $85K, $91K. By the time it's finished, you've paid $95,000. That's 19% over the original PO. And nobody flagged it while it was happening.

How Subcontractor Costs Creep Up

It's not that the subbie did anything wrong. There are extras, variations, and additional delays — all probably legitimate. But if nobody is comparing invoices against the purchase order as they come in, you don't find out until it hits your job cost report weeks later. By then, it's too late to do anything about it.

The Simple Fix: A Committed Cost Tracker

All it takes is a simple committed cost tracker that shows three things for every subcontractor on every job:

• PO value — what was originally agreed
• Invoiced to date — what's been billed so far
• Remaining — how much is left before you hit the PO limit

This catches cost overruns in real time, before they eat your margin. It's one of the simplest tools you can implement, and one of the most effective at protecting project profitability.