Simpro Job Profitability Reporting: A Step-by-Step Guide to Accurate Margins

If you can only build one report from your Simpro data, build this one. Simpro job profitability reporting tells you the true margin on every job — and that single number reshapes how you quote, which customers you keep, and where your profit is really leaking. This is a step-by-step guide to building it properly, so the margins you report reflect reality rather than gut feel.

Why job profitability reporting matters

Most owners can quote you a confident margin for a "typical" job. Build accurate profitability reporting and that number often moves — sometimes dramatically — because headline margin ignores the costs that quietly eat profit: unbilled hours, materials that weren't recovered, rework and overhead. Until those are captured per job, you're estimating, not measuring. We cover the "why" in depth in job profitability reporting in Simpro: from raw data to real margins. Here, let's focus on the how.

Step 1: Decide what "profit" means

Before touching the data, agree on the definition. Are you reporting gross margin (revenue minus direct job costs) or fully-loaded margin (after a fair share of overhead)? Both are valid, but they answer different questions and you must be consistent. Pick one as your headline number and, ideally, show both — gross for operational decisions, fully-loaded for strategic ones.

Step 2: Gather the cost components from Simpro

True job cost is built from several streams of Simpro data, and missing any one of them inflates your apparent margin:

• Labour — every hour booked to the job, costed at the correct rate, including overtime and time that wasn't billed.
• Materials — purchase orders and stock issued to the job, including what wasn't passed on to the customer.
• Subcontractors — both committed and actual costs.
• Plant and equipment — any hire or internal plant charges allocated to the job.

Step 3: Capture true revenue

Revenue is rarely a single figure either. Pull together the quoted amount, any variations, and what was actually invoiced. The gap between quoted and invoiced is itself a powerful signal — it shows where scope crept without being charged.

Step 4: Build budget vs actual

The most valuable version of this report compares budget to actual as the job progresses, not just at the end. Spotting a job tracking over budget at 40% complete gives you time to act; discovering it at invoicing gives you a lesson. Structure your report so every active job shows budgeted cost, cost to date, and projected final margin.

Step 5: Automate it in Power BI

Pulling all of this together by hand means combining several Simpro reports — and often accounting data too — which is slow and error-prone. That's why job profitability is usually the first thing businesses move into Power BI. With the data extracted and modelled once, the report rebuilds itself on every refresh. The mechanics of that pipeline are covered in Simpro Power BI integration and the connection choices in how to connect Simpro to Power BI.

Step 6: Slice it the ways that matter

Once you have clean job margin, the insights multiply. Look at margin by customer (are your biggest clients your most profitable?), by job type, by technician and by site. Patterns emerge that change how you quote and who you prioritise. This is also why job margin sits at the top of our list of Simpro KPIs.

Step 7: Put it where people will see it

A profitability report buried in someone's inbox once a month won't change behaviour. Put it on a dashboard the team sees daily — building a Simpro dashboard in Power BI and our guide to the Simpro dashboard show how. Visibility is what turns a report into a habit.

Common mistakes

• Counting only billed labour. Unbilled hours are still a cost — leaving them out flatters every margin.
• Ignoring unrecovered materials. Stock issued but not charged is pure leakage.
• Reporting only at job close. By then it's too late to influence the outcome.
• Not reconciling to accounts. If your reported profit doesn't tie to your P&L, no one will trust it.

Getting it built and reconciled

Accurate job profitability reporting is the highest-return report most Simpro businesses can build — and the one most worth getting right. Our Simpro reporting service builds it for you and reconciles it with your accounts, and our Simpro dashboard service puts it in front of the team daily. For the broader approach, start with our complete guide to Simpro reporting, or talk to a Simpro specialist.