Weekly Knowify report of jobs and phases over budget

1. Open Contract Jobs in Knowify for the high-level cost column of every job, which shows a total but not which phase is over.
2. Open each active job and go to Plan & Track to read cost to date against budget for every phase.
3. For several jobs at once, open the Advanced Jobs Report from Reports, pick the date range and the Active tab, and compare Cost to Date, Budget and Remaining for Labor, Material and Subcontractors.
4. Check the Contract Jobs Progress card on the Dashboard, which shows the percent of budget spent per job.
5. Copy the problem jobs into a message to the project managers. Knowify does not send anyone a phase overrun on a schedule, so a phase that crossed its budget midweek stays unnoticed until someone looks.

Every Monday at 7, list the active Knowify jobs with a phase over budget or above 90% of its budget, biggest overrun first.

1. 01

   Pick the jobs worth checking

   The agent calls list_jobs with status active and limit 100. Jobs with no cost yet are skipped, since a job that has not started cannot be over. Bidding and closed jobs stay out unless you ask for a closed-job review.

2. 02

   Read every phase, not the job total

   For each remaining job, get_job_cost gives the phase lines. A job can sit under budget overall while its framing phase is 1,200 dollars over and its finish phase has not started, so the agent ranks phases, not jobs. It marks a phase as over when cost passes budget, and as at risk when spend passes the threshold you set, 90 percent by default.

3. 03

   Separate real overruns from setup gaps

   A phase with cost and a zero budget is listed as unbudgeted cost, not as a percent overrun. When one phase carries a job's whole cost while the others show none, the agent says the bills may have landed on the wrong phase, because an unmapped QuickBooks bill goes to the first phase created.

4. 04

   Add the hours waiting for review

   For each flagged job, list_time_entries with approved set to unapproved for the past week shows hours that are entered but not yet approved in Review Time. The report names the person and the hours, so the project manager knows the number may still move.

5. 05

   Send one short list

   Phases over budget come first, sorted by dollars over, then the at-risk phases, then setup gaps. The agent writes nothing in Knowify, so the run needs no approval and can go out by email or Slack at the same time every Monday.

Knowify job cost check, Mon 12 Oct, 14 active jobs read
Over budget: Maple St Remodel, Framing $15,200 of $14,000 (-$1,200)
Over budget: Oak Ave Duplex, Plumbing rough-in $8,950 of $8,400 (-$550)
At risk: Riverside Dental Office, Electrical 93% spent, phase 60% complete
Setup gap: Hilltop Garage, all $6,300 cost on Site prep, other phases $0 (check QuickBooks bill mapping)
Waiting in Review Time: Sam Ortiz 16 h on Maple St Framing

• Knowify sets budgets per phase in budget mode of Plan & Track (Switch to budget mode), with separate material, labor and subcontractor budgets; labor and subcontractor may need to be enabled first.
• On the Knowify Dashboard Contract Jobs Progress card, a job without an internal budget uses its contract value as the budget, so its percent spent can look low.
• A QuickBooks bill pulled into Knowify without a phase designated is logged against the first phase created for the job, by creation date rather than by the order in Plan & Track.
• Knowify's top-tier Advanced Permissions can hide cost information such as pay rates and material costs on Plan & Track from everyone except Admin users and users with Unlimited Approval Authority; with that permission on, the connected account needs one of those roles.
• Cost Plus jobs do not appear on the Knowify Advanced Jobs Report or the WIP Report, and the Advanced Jobs Report selects jobs by creation date, so a cost plus job is checked in its own Plan & Track.

Every tool here only reads, so it can run weekly from n8n, Make, Zapier or cron without waiting for your OK.

Sources: Knowify: How to view the cost to date of a job · Knowify: Dashboard Card, Contract Jobs Progress · Knowify: Linking QuickBooks bills to Phases · Knowify: Advanced Permissions · Knowify: Advanced jobs report · Knowify: Advanced Jobs & Work In Progress Report · Knowify: How to add / edit budgets on a project

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/knowify/get_job_cost \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"job_id":"418203"}'

{
  "job_id": "418203",
  "budget_total": 29000,
  "cost_total": 22500,
  "phases": [
    {
      "phase": "Framing",
      "budget": 14000,
      "cost": 15200,
      "variance": -1200
    },
    {
      "phase": "Rough-in",
      "budget": 9000,
      "cost": 6100,
      "variance": 2900
    },
    {
      "phase": "Finish",
      "budget": 6000,
      "cost": 1200,
      "variance": 4800
    }
  ]
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is knowify_get_job_cost. Example data.

• Create a Knowify job and send the proposal for e-signature
• Create Knowify progress invoices by percent complete
• Knowify API and MCP server: every tool
• All use cases