Materials Tracking Done Properly: Stop Losing Money on Forgotten Supplies
By Jotter Team
The invisible cost
Every tradesperson has done it. You grab a handful of fittings from the van, use them on a job, and forget to add them to the invoice. It is not deliberate -- it is just that the materials are worth five or ten dollars each and it does not feel worth writing down in the moment. Over a week, those forgotten fittings add up to fifty or a hundred dollars. Over a year, it is thousands.
The other common scenario: you stop at the supplier mid-job, pick up materials, use them on site, and throw the receipt in the glovebox. At invoice time, you cannot remember which job the materials were for. They either get left off the invoice entirely or lumped into a vague "materials" line item that does not reflect what was actually used.
Why materials tracking fails
The problem is not awareness -- every tradie knows they should track materials. The problem is friction. Most methods of tracking materials require too many steps at the wrong time:
- Pen and paper: Works in the moment but creates a re-entry problem later. Someone has to read the notebook and type it into the invoice.
- Spreadsheets: Nobody opens a spreadsheet on their phone while standing in a ditch.
- Complex job management software: Some tools make you navigate through five screens to add a material. That is four screens too many.
How Jotter handles materials
In Jotter, materials are line items on a job. Adding one takes about 15 seconds:
- Open the job you are working on.
- Tap "Add Line Item."
- Pick the item from your Xero items list (or type a description for non-standard items).
- Set the quantity.
- Done.
Because the items come from your Xero items list, the product codes and pricing are already correct. No guessing, no looking up prices later. Your team adds materials as they use them, and the data flows straight through to the Xero invoice when the job is completed.
Visibility controls for your team
Not every team member needs to see pricing. If you have labourers or apprentices tracking materials, you might not want them seeing your markup. Jotter's "hide prices" setting lets team members add materials by name and quantity without seeing the dollar value. They track what they use; you control the pricing.
You can also restrict which items your team can see. If you have hundreds of items in Xero but your team only needs to pick from a short list, use item visibility controls to show them just the relevant ones. Less scrolling, fewer mistakes.
The habit that pays for itself
The key to materials tracking is making it a reflex, not a chore. Here are three tips:
- Add materials immediately after using them. Before you put the tool down, add the item to Jotter. Twenty seconds now saves twenty minutes at invoicing time.
- Use the van as a trigger. Every time you grab something from the van, add it to the job. Make the physical action of taking a fitting the cue to log it.
- Review before completing. When you mark a job complete in Jotter, take 30 seconds to scan the line items. Anything missing? Add it now, while you are still on site and can see the evidence.
The numbers
If better materials tracking helps you capture an extra $50 per week in materials that would have gone unbilled, that is $2,400 per year. For a team of five where each person forgets $50/week in materials, that is $12,000. The Starter plan costs $839.88/year. The maths are hard to argue with.