Reading Job Cost and Margin

Availability: all plans

ServiceVisit turns the time your staff record against a work plan into job cost, then compares that cost with what you charged. Approved time on a Work Order is attributed to the plan's steps, priced at your standard Labor rate and at each employee's own hourly cost, and shown next to your sales so you can see margin. This guide explains where to read it and what the figures mean.

Before you start

The reports sit under Reports in the main menu, and they show internal cost, so access is limited. Labor Costs needs permission to view reports and labor cost insights. Service Margins needs those two plus permission to view service margin insights. Work Allocation also needs advanced analytics, which only plans with advanced reporting include.

For the figures to fill in, you need three things: a work plan with estimated minutes on its steps, an active hourly Labor item in your Price Book with a Cost Price, and an hourly cost on each field employee. Time has to be approved before it counts; see the guide on approving timesheets.

Steps

Choose Reports, then Labor Costs. Two cards show the Standard Labor cost per hour and the Employee cost coverage, meaning how many field employees have an hourly cost. The Current hourly comparison table lists each field employee with their Standard cost, Employee cost and Difference. A positive difference means the employee costs less than the standard.
In the Completed work section, set Completed from and Through, choose Show and then Apply. Open any Work Order to see expected and approved onsite minutes, Standard cost, Employee cost, Cost variance and Unallocated minutes. The Frozen work-plan steps table breaks the same figures down by plan step, and Employee time and evidence lists each person's recorded time.
Choose Reports, then Service Margins. Each service shows its advertised price, Expected labor, Other direct costs, Total direct cost, Direct gross profit, Gross margin, Gap to target and Price at target. The target is shown at the top of the page.
Choose View completed work under a service to see results from real jobs: Net sales (tax excluded), Standard labor, Employee labor, Labor variance, Direct gross profit and Gross margin. Open a job to see its Work Orders and the people who worked on them. Choose All services to go back.
If your plan includes it, choose Reports, then Work Allocation to see how each time entry was attributed to plan steps. Choose a Work Order number to open Review Work Allocation, which shows the revision history. Someone with the right permission can enter minutes under Correct attribution, give a Reason and choose Save correction. The minutes must add up to the recorded total.

Tips

Margins here are direct gross margins. Overhead is excluded, and the current estimate does not include travel time.
Where a cost is missing the report shows "Unknown" instead of a guess. Read the Coverage line on a service to see what is missing, and fill that in.
A corrected attribution adds a new revision. It never changes the recorded time.
Revenue uses issued invoices after discounts, excluding tax and deposit invoices, and refunds reduce it.

If something goes wrong

"Unable to load service margins. Please try again." means the report could not load, so retry. If costs read "Unknown", check the Standard Labor cost card for "Not set" and add a Cost Price to your Labor item, or check that time is approved. A line reading "Changed — review needed" on Work Allocation means recorded time changed after it was attributed, so review it before relying on its cost.

Building Reusable Work Plans — A work plan is a reusable list of steps for a kind of job, such as an annual maintenance visit. Each step has a type, a title, an estimated number of minutes and, if you want, a Price Book item. When…
Setting Up Work Classifications — A work classification is the kind of work a job or plan is for. Setting them up once means jobs get sensible defaults and your work plans are filed under the right kind of work, which keeps the…
View service margins — ServiceVisit has a Service Margins report that compares what you charge for a service with what it costs you. For each bookable service it shows the advertised price, expected labor, other direct…
View labor costs — ServiceVisit has a Labor Costs report that shows what your field staff cost. It compares the standard cost of your Labor item with each field employee's current hourly cost, and shows how many field…
Time Tracking and Timesheet Approval Overview — Time tracking records the time a technician spends travelling, on site and working, attaches it to the work order or assessment it belongs to, and carries it through review. Most of it happens as a…
Approving Timesheets and Reading the Workday Report — The Timesheet Approval Queue is where a manager or owner reviews the time technicians submit. Each timesheet is one technician's time on one work order. You can approve it, reject it with a reason…