Painting Contractors: Let's talk about keeping projects on budget

All the most successful paint businesses I know, they're using production rates and then they are giving the budgeted hours of the project to their crew lead, hold them accountable to those budgeted hours for each project. So it starts with the estimate. You have to use production rates to give them the budget hours. Then you gotta give 'em a work order and software like PaintScout does this, and JobJobs. There's softwares out there that, you know, you do your estimate and then it generates a work order with the budget hours and then hold them accountable to that. Making sure your crew leads know what the budget is, one, and then two, holding them accountable to that budget. Some paint businesses I work with, they use a performance pay system. You know, if the crew gets under budget, they get a portion of the labor that they came under budget on. That's a common strategy to kind of incentivize crews to, to go under budget.