Construction WIP Reporting
Know which jobs are really making money — every month, not at the end
Your Bank Balance Isn't Your Profit
In a construction business, cash in the bank says more about how you've been claiming than how jobs are going. A work-in-progress (WIP) report is what tells you the truth: which jobs are over-billed, which are under-billed, and what each one is really going to make.
Xero and MYOB don't produce one, so most builders keep a WIP spreadsheet that someone rebuilds each month — when they get to it. We automate it, so the report is ready at month end and your accountant gets the same reconciled numbers every time.
Why WIP Reports Go Wrong
The maths is simple. Keeping the inputs current, across every job, every month, is not.
The spreadsheet gets rebuilt every month
Someone exports job costs, copies in claims, updates budgets and variations, and fixes the formulas that broke since last month. It takes days, and only one person knows how it works.
Cost to complete is a guess — or last month’s guess
Percentage complete is only as good as the cost-to-complete estimate. When project managers don’t update it, the WIP report quietly reports the margin you hoped for, not the one you’re getting.
Over-billing hides problems
Claiming ahead of the work looks great for cash flow, until the job runs out of money to finish. Without a WIP report, an over-billed losing job looks like a winner right up until the end.
Variations sit outside the budget
Approved variations change both the contract value and the budget. If they live in emails and a separate list, the WIP report is wrong on exactly the jobs that changed most.
How an Automated WIP Report Works
Pull costs and claims automatically
Costs to date and progress claims by job come straight from Xero or MYOB (job tracking, tracking categories or your job module) — no exports, no copying.
Bring in budgets and variations
Contract values, budgets and approved variations come from your estimating or job management system, or a structured sheet if that’s where they live today.
Project managers update cost to complete
Each PM gets a short monthly form for their jobs: estimated cost to complete and a note on anything changing. Late updates are flagged, not silently carried forward.
The WIP report builds itself
Percentage complete, earned revenue, over/under billing and projected margin for every job — plus the month-end adjustment your accountant needs, reconciled back to the ledger.
What's in the Report
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Contract value (incl. variations) | What the job is now worth, not what it was quoted at |
| Cost to date | Straight from the ledger, by job |
| Estimated cost to complete | From the PM, dated, with notes |
| Percentage complete | Cost to date ÷ estimated total cost |
| Earned revenue | Contract value × percentage complete |
| Billed to date | Progress claims issued, from the ledger |
| Over / under billing | Billed minus earned — the adjustment your accountant posts |
| Projected margin | Where the job will finish if the estimate holds — compared with last month |
WIP Reporting FAQs
Still Rebuilding the WIP Spreadsheet?
Send us last month's version — however messy — and tell us where your budgets and claims live. We'll show you what an automated version would look like.