Job costing is tracking every dollar spent on a project against the estimate, in real time. Open-book job costing means the client has access to that tracking — spent to date, committed for future work, and current projection-to-complete. RainFire Builders provides monthly job cost reports on projects above a defined threshold, showing budget versus actual for every cost code. This transparency eliminates end-of-project surprises and allows informed decisions about scope changes while there is still time and budget flexibility to respond to them. It is the most effective tool for preventing the most common client complaint in construction: “I had no idea it was going to cost this much.”