Traditionally, the construction industry has used some combination of three-ring binders, handwritten notes, and spreadsheets to track and report on project progress and business performance.
These methods of storing and tracking data have come with familiar challenges:
Lost paperwork
Illegible handwritten notes
Difficulty sharing daily reports among key stakeholders
Dense Excel spreadsheets that require tons of manual upkeep
Lack of real-time updates for executives and project managers
To solve these issues and save time in the reporting process, many contractors are adopting daily report apps or construction management software to ensure project data is never lost, always up-to-date, and easy to manage.
In this article, we walk through the reporting features of our construction management software, ServiceTitan.
First, we’ll discuss our reporting features for tracking a construction company’s overall financial health, including our business dashboard and work in progress (WIP) reports. Then, we’ll cover our project-specific reporting features for job costing, construction daily reports, and more.
Table of Contents
Construction Business Dashboard: Track revenue, projects, job statuses, and more
Work in Progress Reporting: Track percentage of completion across projects
Construction Project Tracking: Job costing, daily reports, and more
Want to see how ServiceTitan works to streamline your construction reporting? Schedule a call to get a free, live, one-on-one walk-through of the features we describe throughout this article.
Construction Dashboards: Track Revenue, Projects, Job Statuses, and More
Construction Business Dashboard
When ServiceTitan users navigate to their customizable construction dashboard, they’ll see an overview of their most important business metrics for the current day. These KPIs include:
Completed and Missed Job Revenue
The revenue section displays a meter showing completed and missed job revenue. The meter is based on two KPIs:
Total Revenue: Completed revenue + non-job revenue + adjustment Revenue. Completed revenue is the sum of income items on completed job invoices.
Missed Revenue: Estimated missed revenue from unbooked calls, unconverted jobs, and canceled jobs (based on booking rates and job invoice averages from the last 30 days).
Monthly and Weekly Revenue Trends
This section displays interactive revenue trends by month or by week (viewed as bar or line graphs). By hovering over a given month or week, as shown above, users can see year-over-year revenue comparisons. The week trend displays a graph of weekly revenues for the past 26 weeks.
Invoice Summary
The Project Information section provides you with invoice data for your projects. With Project Information, you can:
Arrange and filter the report similarly to any custom report.
Open records directly from the report by clicking the Invoice #, Job #, or Customer Name.
View totals such as the total number of invoices or jobs included in the report.
Export the report to an XLSX or PDF file.
Drill down into individual invoices to view more detail.
Project Job Status Gauge
The Project Job Status Gauge is a report that provides you with data on the status of each project you have.
With the Project Job Status Gauge, you can:
Arrange and filter the report similarly to any custom report; you can filter by:
Job Start/Completed: Filter for projects with jobs with start or completion dates within the date range.
Estimate Sold On: Filter for projects whose first sold estimate was sold within the date range.
Open records directly from the report by clicking the Project number or Customer.
Export the report to an XLSX or PDF report.
Find useful data. For example, at the bottom of the Currently Scheduled column, you can find the Count, Count Distinct, Sum, Average, Minimum, and Maximum for that column.
Project Labor Hours
The Project Labor Hours section reports the hours dedicated to each project. The hours are also broken down to give you data on how the hours were spent on a project.
With Project Labor Hours, you can:
Arrange and filter the report similarly to any custom report.
Open records directly from the report by clicking the Project number or Customer.
Drill down for additional information, such as Driving Hours, Working Hours, Overtime Hours, Total Time In Hours, Project Estimate Sales, or Percentage Of Sold Estimates.
Export the report to an XLSX or PDF file.
Find useful data. For example, at the bottom of the Project Number column, you can find the Count and Count Distinct for that column.
Working Hours By Project
The Working Hours By Project section displays a column chart where you can track the total number of hours for each project. The chart is default filtered by the Job Start/Completed date. However, you can change the filter to update this.
Project Portfolio Dashboard
In addition to the construction business dashboard, we also offer a Project Portfolio dashboard that is designed to further enhance visibility across all of your projects and proactively tend to projects with a breakdown of critical metrics, including overdue payments, budget deviations, and more.
Simply select a date range and the page will provide a breakdown of your projects by status and the total number of projects each project manager is currently overseeing. You can adjust filters by project status or manager, as well as other custom fields enabling you to tailor the projects table to your specific needs.
Once you have your dashboard tailored to your preferences, you can save it to ensure your filters and table configuration are preserved, eliminating the need to reapply them with each visit.
Work in Progress Reporting: Track Percentage of Completion Across Projects
To help construction businesses maintain an accurate and up-to-date picture of their work in progress, ServiceTitan offers work in progress (WIP) reports that calculate the correct amount of recognized revenue for projects based on the percentage-of-completion method.
For business owners and executives running larger organizations with many jobs in progress, this report is invaluable for getting a real-time view of the financial health of the business and ensuring that budgets are managed effectively. In addition, project managers can use WIP reports to manage over- and under-billing.
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To run the report, users select from a short series of fields including a date range of transactions, project statuses, project completed date, etc. Once finished, a table is generated that allows contractors to view the following by project:
Project number and name
Contract value
Estimated total cost
Total cost
Percent complete cost
Earned revenue
Revenue
Retainage percent
Retainage
WIP reports can be customized with a variety of different columns and calculations based on the needs of your business. These reports can easily be exported to further manipulate in spreadsheets, if desired.
Like all other features within ServiceTitan, the data used to generate WIP reports are automatically pulled from other areas of the platform. As a result, the amount of work and potential for errors in generating these reports is significantly reduced.
Construction Project Tracking: Job Costing, Daily Reports, and More
So far, the business dashboard and WIP reporting features we’ve covered are primarily used for construction reporting at the business level. In this section, we’ll cover the suite of features we offer for tracking and reporting on individual projects.
Project Dashboard: Manage Projects From One Place
In ServiceTitan, all construction projects are managed from the project overview dashboard.
This page allows you to:
View all of the basic project information (project name, contact information, customer phone number, etc.).
View and log tasks for the project.
Access project financials including project job costing and expense details that update automatically throughout a project.
Initiate key actions such as generating an estimate, purchase order, application for payment, invoice, and more.
View team members involved in the project.
Access an audit trail including events, notes, and project documentation.
Project Financials: Automate Job Costing
As you move throughout a job — creating purchase orders, logging labor hours at the construction site, processing change orders, receiving progress payments, and so on — ServiceTitan automates your financial data collection and KPI calculations.
So, instead of constantly needing to update a series of spreadsheets every time labor costs and material costs are incurred, this is done automatically in real-time, based on work that’s completed on-site and entered into the system.
Furthermore, you can view a detailed breakdown of your actual costs versus your budgeted costs. This will automatically update as you accumulate expenses from materials, equipment, and labor hours. It will display your margins in dollar and percent form to help you track your job costs and profitability throughout your project.
You can also access a table breaking down your expenses in further detail:
You can click on any line item and see the exact source of where that expense came from (e.g., which technician logged those hours, or which purchase orders and vendors a given set of materials came from). This allows you to easily check your numbers and feel confident in the sources of your data.
Daily Reports: Leverage Custom Forms and Checklists From the Job Site
With ServiceTitan custom forms, businesses can facilitate daily logs without the need for separate daily report software (reducing the overall number of construction apps and providers companies need).
From our desktop app, contractors can upload a PDF form that they already use, or build a custom daily report template by adding the fields that they want reported on each day from the job site. For example:
On-site team members
Weather report
Materials received
Equipment on site
Summary of the day’s activities
10+ different formats can be leveraged for each form item, including text, numbers, checkboxes, dropdowns, stoplight buttons, and more. Signatures can also be added if you require someone from the field team to sign off on your daily reports.
Once these templates are created, they can be filled out by whoever is responsible via ServiceTitan’s user-friendly mobile app (compatible with Android and iOS mobile devices).
Of course, field report templates such as this are just one use for our forms feature. They can also be used for punch lists, safety checklists, and other forms needed during construction project management.
Get a Personalized Demo of ServiceTitan Construction Management Software
Throughout this post, we’ve provided a detailed look at our construction reporting features. However, reporting is just one aspect of our platform. We offer an entire project management solution for subcontractors including:
Estimates
Billing
Task management
Accounting integrations with QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, and Viewpoint Vista
And more
If you’re interested in learning more about how ServiceTitan’s cloud-based platform can help you streamline and grow profitability in your contracting business, schedule a free call with us to see a personalized demo of the features and functionality we’ve discussed throughout this post.
