Metrics Libraryby Semaphor
Library / Guides
Guide ยท Construction software

Building customer reporting for construction software

Which reports contractors expect from the software that runs their jobs, who reads them, and a sensible order to build them in.

What contractors expect

Construction ERP and job costing products hold the data contractors need to run their business: jobs, budgets, change orders, costs, forecasts, and billings. Customers tend to expect a small set of reports built from that data:

  • Job cost report: budget, cost to date, cost to complete, and variance by job and cost code.
  • WIP schedule: the monthly work in progress report with over/under billing, for the controller, surety, and lender.
  • Margin by job: projected gross margin and how it is changing.
  • Backlog: contracted work remaining.
  • Change order log: pending and approved change orders and how long approvals take.

Who reads them

Role at the contractor What they need
Owner / CEO A company roll-up and the few jobs that need attention.
CFO / controller Every open job, monthly, tied to the financial statements and the WIP schedule.
Project manager Their own jobs, by cost code, with current forecasts.
Surety / lender A consistent WIP schedule each period.

A sensible order to build them

  1. Job cost variance first. It needs budgets, change orders, costs, and forecasts, which most job costing products already store. It is the report PMs and controllers look at most often.
  2. WIP over/under billing next. It reuses the same estimate at completion and adds contracts and billings.
  3. Gross margin by job and backlog. Both follow from earned revenue once the WIP math is in place.
  4. Change order cycle time and labor productivity. These need timestamps and installed quantities, which not every product tracks.

Settings customers will ask for

Contractors calculate the same metric with different choices. Plan for these as settings, not separate reports:

  • Sign convention for variance.
  • Whether pending change orders are included, excluded, or shown separately.
  • Fiscal year start.
  • Retainage shown gross or net.
  • Percent complete method.
  • Grouping by PM, division, or region.

Data to check first

  • Are approved change orders stored with a budget side and a revenue side?
  • Do PMs record cost-to-complete forecasts by period?
  • Are billings stored with retainage separated?
  • Can cost codes in actuals be matched to cost codes in the budget?

The metric pages list fields and include a SQL sketch for each.