Getting paid, 29 October 2026
How to build a job profit dashboard: revenue, cost and margin per job
A job profit dashboard is one table with a row per job and six columns: price, labour, materials, subcontractors and plant, a share of overheads, and profit with margin. Fill it from timesheets and supplier bills as each job finishes. Within a month it shows which kinds of job pay and which don't, which your P&L for the whole business can't.
Why isn't your P&L enough?
A P&L tells you whether the business made money over a year. It doesn't tell you which jobs did. A firm can show a healthy profit while one type of job quietly loses money every time, carried by the others.
That's the gap a job profit dashboard fills. It also answers the question owners ask most: whether a job priced at a certain rate was worth doing. About seven of the 28 firms we spoke to on sales calls this year, a small sample rather than a survey, said they didn't know which jobs made money.
What goes in each column?
Use the same six columns for every job, so jobs can be compared.
| Column | Where the figure comes from | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Price | The accepted quote plus agreed variations, excluding VAT | Using the quote and forgetting variations |
| Labour | Days on site × your true labour cost per day | Leaving out the owner's own days |
| Materials | Supplier bills matched to the job | Using the quoted materials figure |
| Subs and plant | Subcontractor invoices and hire bills | Missing the skip or the scaffold |
| Overhead share | Overhead per man-day × man-days on site | Leaving it out, so every job looks profitable |
| Profit and margin | Price − costs; profit ÷ price | Using markup instead of margin |
The labour and overhead figures come from the same sum as your day rate. If you haven't worked them out, start with overheads per man-day and job costing. Xero's own construction job costing guide groups costs the same way: labour, materials, equipment and overheads.
A worked dashboard for five jobs
Take an example London heating and air conditioning firm, two engineers on each job. The figures are made up to show the method. Each engineer costs £180 per productive day including employer costs, so a two-person day costs £360 in labour. Overheads work out at £24 per man-day, so £48 per two-person day. Here are five example jobs finished in November.
| Job | Days | Price | Labour | Materials | Subs and plant | Overhead | Profit | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Combi swap, Ealing | 2 | £3,950 | £720 | £1,880 | £0 | £96 | £1,254 | 31.7% |
| Two-head air con, Croydon | 4 | £6,800 | £1,440 | £3,150 | £0 | £192 | £2,018 | 29.7% |
| Full system, Barnet | 8 | £11,400 | £2,880 | £4,620 | £650 | £384 | £2,866 | 25.1% |
| Bathroom and boiler, Harrow | 12 | £14,600 | £4,320 | £5,480 | £1,200 | £576 | £3,024 | 20.7% |
| Boiler and cylinder, Enfield | 5 | £5,200 | £1,800 | £2,950 | £0 | £240 | £210 | 4.0% |
| Total | 31 | £41,950 | £11,160 | £18,080 | £1,850 | £1,488 | £9,372 | 22.3% |
Three things stand out. The small, quick jobs earn the best margin. The biggest job earns the most profit in pounds but the thinnest margin of the four that went to plan, which is common on big domestic jobs. And the Enfield job made £210 on £5,200.
What went wrong on the Enfield job
Quoted as a three-day boiler and unvented cylinder swap. It took five.
| Profit if it had taken 3 days£5,200 − (£1,080 + £2,950 + £144) | £1,026 |
| Two extra days of labour2 × £360 | −£720 |
| Two extra days of overhead2 × £48 | −£96 |
| Profit as it finished£1,026 − £816 | £210 |
Run your own jobs through the same sum. The calculator is preset to the Enfield job.
Your numbers, not a promise. Change any figure to match your firm.
Why overrun days hurt small jobs most
On a short job, one extra day is a large share of the whole job. On the Enfield job, two extra days took four-fifths of the profit. On the 12-day Harrow job, the same two days would have cost the same £816 but left most of the profit intact.
when they run over by one day. That's all the profit gone.
He was talking about small jobs, where a 15% target margin leaves no room for a day nobody priced. A dashboard makes the pattern visible: if the same job type keeps overrunning, either the time in the quote is wrong or something on site keeps going wrong. Both are fixable once you can see them.
How do you keep the dashboard up to date?
The table is easy. Getting the right costs against each job, every week, is the work.
- Give every job a reference.
Use it on the quote, the merchant account order, the timesheet and the invoice.
- Get supplier bills against the job as they arrive.
Ask merchants to put your job reference on the order. Our guide to matching supplier invoices to jobs in Xero shows how.
- Record days on site per job.
A daily message from each engineer is enough: job reference, hours, anything extra used.
- Close the job within a week of finishing.
Add the last bills and variations, and fill in the row.
- Review monthly.
Sort by margin. Look at the bottom three and ask what they have in common.
If you use Xero, its Projects feature tracks time and costs against each project and compares budgets with actual costs. On Xero's UK pricing as of October 2026, Projects is included in the Ultimate plan at £70 a month (excluding VAT), covering 10 users, and not in Ignite, Grow or Comprehensive. A spreadsheet with the six columns above does the same job for a small firm, as long as the bills and hours reach it.
Where Nexley fits
Nexley is the AI back office for UK trade firms: five AI assistants run your tenders, quotes, buying, scheduling and invoicing. It connects to the tools you already work in, you run it all from WhatsApp, and you approve everything. £799 a month.
Nexley matches supplier bills and receipts to the right job as they arrive, takes hours and materials from engineers' WhatsApp messages, and keeps a profit figure for each job against its quote. When a job runs over or materials come in above the quote, it tells you while the job is still on. You check and approve anything that changes a customer's invoice.
Common questions
What's a good margin per job for a trade firm?
It depends on your trade, your overheads and the job type. The roofer quoted above aimed for 15% after overheads. Use your own dashboard: once you have a few months of jobs, your typical margin by job type is the benchmark that matters.
Should I include my own time in labour?
Yes, at the same rate as anyone else on the tools. If you leave yourself out, a job can look profitable when it only paid you less than you'd pay an employee.
How do I share overheads across jobs?
Use overhead per man-day: yearly overheads divided by the man-days your team works. Multiply by the man-days on each job. It's simple and fair across short and long jobs.
Is margin the same as markup?
No. Margin is profit divided by price; markup is profit divided by cost. A 25% markup is a 20% margin. See markup vs margin.
Sources
Every rule, rate and date above was checked against these sources on the date shown at the top.
Topic: Getting paid
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