Reading Service Margins and Labor Costs

Availability: all plans

Two reports show whether your work is profitable. Service Margins compares what you charge for each service with the labor and direct costs it takes. Labor Costs compares the standard cost of your Labor item with what each field employee actually costs, and breaks completed Work Orders down by time. Both report direct costs only, so overhead is not included.

Before you start

Both reports show cost figures, so you need permission to view reports and permission to view labor costs. Service Margins also needs permission to view profitability.
Labor Costs compares against an active hourly Labor item that has a Cost Price in your pricebook. Until you choose one, the Standard Labor cost card shows "Not set".
Field employees can have an optional hourly cost recorded. Missing costs show as "Unknown", never as a guess.

Steps

Open Reports, then Service Margins. The page states your current gross-margin target.
Use the Show menu to choose 10, 25, 50 or 100 services per page and select Apply.
For each service, read the card: Advertised price, Expected labor, Other direct costs, Total direct cost, Direct gross profit, Gross margin, Gap to target (in points) and Price at target. A coverage note under the card lists any missing inputs.
Select View completed work on a service to see its history: totals under All completed work (net sales excluding tax, standard and employee labor, Labor variance, direct cost, gross profit and margin) and one expandable entry per job. Select All services to go back.
Open Reports, then Labor Costs. The two cards show Standard Labor cost and Employee cost coverage, meaning how many field employees have an hourly cost.
Under Completed work, set Completed from and Through dates (UTC), choose Show, and select Apply.
Expand a Work Order to see expected and approved onsite minutes, standard cost, employee cost and cost variance. Two tables follow: Frozen work-plan steps and Employee time and evidence, with a Revision link to review how time was attributed.
Read Current hourly comparison for each field employee: Standard cost, Employee cost and Difference.

Tips

A positive labor variance or difference means staff cost is below the standard.
Actual labor counts approved onsite, travel and checkout time and leaves out breaks. Expected plan minutes are compared with onsite minutes only.
Completed work uses the rates and costs recorded at the time, so changing a rate today does not rewrite old results.
Price guidance only appears when costs are complete, and it rounds up to the nearest cent.
Unfinished work, missing costs, disputes and write-offs suppress price recommendations, and combined gross profit and margin stay unavailable while a job has incomplete coverage.

If something goes wrong

If a page shows "Unable to load service margins. Please try again.", refresh and retry.
If Service Margins or Labor Costs is missing from the Reports menu, your role lacks the cost permissions above.
If every figure says "Unknown", check that your Labor item has a Cost Price and that employee hourly costs are recorded.

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