Estimated profit on a job

Estimated Profit, at the bottom of the Completion Detail tab, works out what the job actually made — the amount being charged, less what it cost you to do it.

Completion Detail → Estimated Profit

How the figure is built

Job Amount at the top is what the job is worth — the total of its billable lines from the Item / Invoice tab.

Beneath it, each cost has its own line and its own tick box:

Cost	Where it comes from
Service Cost	The cost of the services performed, as opposed to what they are sold for
Material Cost	What the parts and items used on the job cost you
Labour Cost	Worked out from the hours recorded against the job and the assigned users’ rates — shown as the person and their hours, so you can see how it was reached
Additional Labour Cost	Extra labour that is not on the standard calculation, such as an outside contractor
Expenses	Everything claimed on the job’s Expenses tab — fuel, tolls, parts bought on the way

Total Profit is what is left, with the margin as a percentage.

Using the tick boxes

The tick boxes are the point of the window. Untick a cost and it drops out of the calculation, so you can see the job several ways without changing anything: the margin on labour alone, the margin before the parts, the margin once the drive is counted.

The default view — everything ticked — is the true cost. Turning things off is for understanding where the money went, not for producing a better-looking number.

Reading it honestly

The figure is only as good as what has been recorded, and there are two common reasons it looks wrong:

Costs are in, income is not. A job that has consumed a €15,000 compressor but has not had that compressor put on it as a billable line will show a heavy loss. Check the Item / Invoice tab before believing the number.

The hours are wrong. Labour is calculated from the times on completion detail. A job someone forgot to close until the next morning carries hours nobody worked, and the profit falls accordingly. Correct the times first — see correcting times.

Read after both are right, the figure tells you which work is worth taking: which job types earn, which clients cost more to serve than they pay, and which repeat visits are quietly losing money.