Work In Progress (WIP) Reporting Measures Construction Project Profitability

A favorite adage of mine is “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” But you have to know what you want to determine before you can know what needs to be measured. In construction, the industry with the lowest start-up survival rate nationwide*, what most business owners need to know is as simple as this – are we going to make it?

One common challenge that construction companies face is not knowing whether a job is profitable or not profitable until it is too late. We know the key to long-term success is being consistently profitable, job after job, year after year. Implementing business intelligence tools like Work in Progress (WIP) Reporting allows you to regularly measure the health of your company to build your success for generations to come.

The TrueVision™ WIP Reporting options in UDA ConstructionOnline™ provide high-level calculations of your company financials, allowing for you to answer several important questions regarding the financial health of your business –

How accurate are we with our initial estimates?

Where do we stand on Project A? Project F? Overall?

Have we paid our bills? What’s outstanding?

Are we making money?

Our goal with ConstructionOnline's business intelligence software is to make sure our customers – working in any given market – have the most insight of any professionals in the industry. TrueVision Business Intelligence simplifies critical data analysis for you, compiling all pertinent information and empowering you to work smarter, not harder. By integrating your construction management software and construction accounting software, your company financial data is finally united, and ConstructionOnline can begin building your WIP Report.

WIP Reporting takes already available data from ConstructionOnline and QuickBooks, such as Original Contract Price, Change Orders, Actuals, Committed Costs, Invoiced Amounts, & more, and calculates additional figures for better visibility on project and company profits. Information that can be gained from these calculations includes, but is not limited to, Cost to Completion, Original Estimated Gross Profit, Final Gross Profit %, % Cost Improvement (Slippage), Over/Under Figures, and more. Many banks, investors, and other organizations require WIP Reporting from companies on a regular basis to assess the health of the company and use this information as an integral component in making decisions about loans, credit lines, membership eligibility, and strategic partnership opportunities.

The mark of a successful contractor is in finding measures that can be repeated regularly to ensure profitable outcomes in all instances. ConstructionOnline's WIP Reporting features provide repeatable, reliable processes that have been proven to build successful companies and turn failing businesses around.

*US Census Bureau places survival rate at 36.4% for construction businesses within first five years.