 In this discussion, we will discuss the discussion question of describe what a job cost sheet is and how it is used. If we see an essay question like this, we're looking at a job cost sheet. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. And that can give us an indication that we are using a job cost system. So we may first if we don't know exactly where to start start off with what a job cost system is when it might be used. And then we can go into the job cost sheets and how the job cost sheets relate to the job cost system. So a job cost system is typically a system one of two that's going to be used for production processes, although it could also be used for service companies as well. Usually in cases where we're going to have some type of customization, where the things that we're producing the jobs we're working on will be different. And therefore we need to track costs between the inventory or the jobs in a in a separate way so that we can track those costs that will differ from job to job because those jobs are going to be different in nature, there's going to be some type of customization typically. So we can think of a construction company, or we can think of anything we make that's going to be customized if we have the custom guitars or custom jewelry, anything that's going to be customized could be used a job cost system could be used in. So within the job cost system, then we have the job sheets. So what is a job sheet? It's going to be the supporting document. It's kind of like a subsidiary ledger. If you take all the sheets together, you can think of them as a supporting documentation, kind of like a subsidiary ledger to the accounts on the trial balance or the balance sheet for inventory, including the inventory that's not yet completed work in process and the inventory that is completed finished goods. Those two numbers on the balance sheet are just going to be one number for say work in process, we're going to have one number representing work in process. And that's going to include a lot of stuff. The work in process account includes direct labor will includes labor material and overhead, and it includes those for multiple jobs. And so we need more detail than what it's going to be on the balance sheet or the or the trial balance. That detail, some of it can be found on the general ledger as can be found with any kind of account, but that only gives us detail by date of when things happened, and we need more detail than that. That's what we use the job sheets for the job sheets will give us detail by job. So it's going to break up this number by job for both work in process and finished goods, depending on if the job is open or closed, completed or not completed. And for each individual job, we'll then see how much of the direct labor goes to it, how much of the work in process and how much overhead is applied to each individual job. So we'll get the detail of each individual job that we are working on. And we'll also be able to sum up the jobs, all the jobs that are not yet completed that should add up to what is on the trial balance under work in process or the balance sheet and all the jobs that have been completed, but have not yet been shipped, haven't gone out to the customers yet, should be if we sum up all those jobs. The number that's on the balance sheet for finished inventory that is not yet gone out has not been transferred yet to cost of goods sold. The content of any individual job cost sheet is usually going to tell us who the customer is. We're going to have the very important information of the job number. That's how we're going to attract the jobs, typically. And we're going to have any customer information on the job cost sheet, and then it will break up the costs of the job. And those costs will typically include direct materials, direct labor and overhead per job will sum those up. Those will give us the total cost for the job. The job cost sheet could look somewhat like an invoice we might see in like a construction company or some type of service business. It's not the same thing. The job cost sheet is tracking the cost, but we could use that cost information, of course, then to fill out and make an invoice with it. We might be very transparent in our invoice and say, Hey, look, this is how much it cost us. And we have a markup that's going to be typical for a construction type of company or possibly many customized projects where we actually say, Hey, here's how much the materials cost, here's how much the overhead is, here's how much labor cost, and here's how much our markup is, this is basically our profit margin. And that could be one way to create the invoice. So just it's important to keep those two things separate. The job sheets are not the same as an invoice, but the invoice may look similar because we may base our invoice in part on the items on the job sheet.