Job cost that ties out
Cost by job, phase and cost code is calculated once, agreed with your controller, and reconciled to a closed period, so the field view and the ledger never tell two different stories.
Power BI consulting for construction
Job cost, WIP and change order dashboards, built in Power BI for construction companies
A fixed-fee build for general contractors and subs whose numbers are accurate at month end and stale on site: committed cost against budget, work in progress, retention, change orders and cash flow in one governed view, with role-based pages for project managers, the controller and ownership. One written price, typical delivery in 2–4 weeks, 30 days of hypercare included.
Representative dashboard — sample data
What you get
Numbers the field and the office both trust
Every build covers the figures a job review actually argues about, not a generic KPI template.
Committed against actual
Subcontracts and purchase orders sit next to costs incurred and budget remaining, so exposure shows up before the invoice does rather than three weeks after the pour.
Change orders, aged and priced
Pending, approved and rejected changes are tracked by job with value and days outstanding, so unapproved work stops quietly turning into unbilled work.
WIP without the month-end scramble
Cost to date, estimate at completion, percent complete and over or under billings are modelled to your accounting policy and refreshed on a schedule, not rebuilt by hand each period.
Retention and cash timing
Retainage held on receivables and owed to subs is shown by job and age alongside billings, collections and projected draws, because a profitable job can still run you short of cash.
Role-based views
Row-level security and certified datasets mean a project manager sees their jobs, a division lead sees the region, and ownership sees the portfolio — all from one governed model.
How it works
Three steps from cost codes to a job-review-ready view
- 1
Walk the job review, then scope
A free consultation covers how you code costs today, where change orders and commitments are logged, and what each role decides in the weekly job review. We reply with a written scope, one fixed fee and a delivery date.
- 2
Connect, model, reconcile
We pull from your accounting and project systems and the spreadsheets in between, build the semantic model, write the measures, and reconcile job by job against a period your controller has already closed.
- 3
Deploy and stand behind it
We publish to your governed workspace with role-based access, walk project managers and ownership through their own views, hand over documentation, and stay on for 30 days of included hypercare.
What a contractor reporting build actually covers
Contractors rarely lack data. The accounting system holds cost codes, commitments and billings, the project management tool holds change orders and daily logs, and someone keeps a cash flow workbook that only they can update — but nobody can put job cost, work in progress and change order exposure on one screen without a day of exporting and pasting. The work is engineering the layer underneath: connecting those sources, agreeing the measure definitions, and modelling them so the numbers survive a job review. Microsoft’s own Power BI documentation (opens in new tab) describes the platform’s data, model, report and service layers, and a construction dashboard that holds up under a bonding review needs all four built deliberately.
Definitions are where these projects are won or lost. Whether a pending change order counts inside committed cost, whether percent complete runs on cost or on units installed, whether retention is netted out of the receivable — each choice moves the headline margin on a job. We settle those with your controller and project managers first and encode them in DAX measures (opens in new tab) that every report page reuses, so the definition lives in one place instead of in six job workbooks.
Deliverables for a typical engagement: the report files and semantic model in your own tenant, tested measures for job cost, committed cost, change orders, WIP, retention, cash flow and equipment utilization, workspace and row-level security configuration, a refresh schedule with monitoring notes, and written documentation. Timeline is typically 2–4 weeks from kickoff, stated in your scope before you commit, with 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included.
The views a general contractor or subcontractor actually opens
Most builds start from the same short list. The table below is the vocabulary we scope against — what each view puts on screen and the reason a GC or a sub keeps an eye on it. Your build takes the rows that match how you run jobs, using your own cost code structure rather than a template.
| Dashboard view | What it shows | Why a GC or sub tracks it |
|---|---|---|
| Job cost to date | Actual cost by job, phase and cost code against original and current budget | It is the first number challenged in a job review, so it has to tie to the ledger every time |
| Committed vs actual | Subcontracts and purchase orders committed, cost incurred, and budget remaining by cost code | Shows exposure before invoices land, while there is still time to change a buyout or a scope |
| Change orders | Pending, approved and rejected changes by job, with value, margin and days outstanding | Unapproved work is unbilled work; ageing the pending log is often the fastest margin recovery available |
| Work in progress (WIP) | Cost to date, estimate at completion, percent complete, earned revenue and over or under billings | Drives revenue recognition and is the schedule the surety and the lender ask to see |
| Retention | Retainage held on receivables and owed to subcontractors, by job and by age | Retention is money already earned but not spendable, and it is easy to lose track of at closeout |
| Cash flow | Billings, collections, payables and projected draws across the next periods | A profitable job can still run the company short between the draw and the payment |
| Equipment utilization | Hours used, idle time and cost per hour by asset and by job | Decides whether an asset earns its keep on this job, moves to another, or should be rented instead |
| Labor productivity | Field hours against budgeted hours by cost code, crew and week | Hours post faster than cost, so it is the earliest visible signal that a job is drifting |
Who this is for
It fits small and mid-sized general contractors, specialty trades and subs — a handful of jobs or a few hundred — where the job review still runs on a workbook somebody rebuilt the night before. A project manager who wants committed cost against budget without waiting for the monthly package. A controller who reworks the WIP schedule by hand every period. An owner who wants to see which divisions and which job types actually make money. If your reporting is accurate but arrives too late to change anything in the field, that is the gap this closes.
Two questions usually come up before the scope is signed, and we have written both up honestly: what a Power BI dashboard build actually costs, with the factors that move a fixed fee up or down, and how to choose a Power BI consultant, which is worth reading before you hand anyone your job cost and margin data.
This page is the construction-shaped version of our wider fixed-fee Power BI dashboard development service, so nothing here is a different engineering standard — only a different vocabulary, in the same way our plant-floor reporting work for manufacturers speaks OEE and downtime instead of cost codes and WIP, and a Power BI consultant for healthcare speaks no-show rates, chair utilization and claim denials. A dashboard can only report on data that exists, so contractors who want the daily log, the punch item or the field ticket captured at source usually pair the build with offline-capable field apps from a Power Apps consultant for construction companies, and many add Power Automate alerts when a change order ages past its threshold so the dashboard pushes rather than waits to be opened.
Fixed-fee project tiers
Three common shapes cover most construction requests. Every fee is fixed and put in writing after your free consultation — the table shows scope and typical timeline, not prices, because an honest price requires seeing your sources first.
| Tier | Scope | Typical timeline | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job cost starter | One or two sources: cost by job, phase and cost code, committed against actual, budget remaining, and refresh configured | About 2 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Project controls and WIP pack | Several sources: WIP schedule, over and under billings, change order log with ageing, retention and cash flow pages, and role-based views for project managers | 2–3 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
| Company-wide governed rollout | Multi-division and multi-entity models, row-level security by job and division, certified datasets, equipment and labor productivity, and admin documentation | 3–4 weeks | Fixed fee — scoped after your free consultation |
Whatever the tier, you own every artifact — report files, semantic model, measure definitions and workspace settings live in your Microsoft tenant from the first day.
Related services
Other ways we make Microsoft easy
Power BI Dashboards
The wider fixed-fee dashboard service: semantic models, DAX, governed reporting and Fabric migration for any industry.
Power Apps Consulting
Field and back-office apps that replace the daily logs, field tickets and paper forms feeding your reports.
Power Automate Consulting
Approvals, alerts and integrations — from change order routing to a nudge when a draw package is overdue.
What a dashboard really costs
An honest fixed-fee cost breakdown and the factors that move the number on a Power BI build.
Signs you have outgrown Excel
When the job cost workbook stops being the fastest tool and starts being the bottleneck.
How to choose a consultant
The questions to ask before you hand anyone your job cost, margin and cash flow data.
FAQ
Construction reporting questions, answered
Every build includes discovery with your project managers and controller, connections to your accounting and project systems, a semantic model, validated job cost, committed cost, change order, WIP and cash flow measures, role-based report pages, governed workspace deployment, and written documentation. The scope and the fee are agreed in writing before any work starts.
Whatever you already run. Accounting and ERP tables hold cost codes, commitments and billings, project management tools hold change orders and daily logs, and field spreadsheets hold the rest. Where a system cannot be reached directly, we agree a reliable export path during scoping rather than assuming one.
We use your definitions, not ours. Cost to date, estimate at completion, percent complete, earned revenue and over or under billings are agreed with your controller, encoded once in the model, and reconciled against a period your accounting team has already closed before anything goes live.
The fee reflects how many systems we connect, how consistent your cost codes are across jobs, and how many role-based views your project managers, controller and ownership need. After a free consultation you get a written scope with one price, and that price moves only if the scope does.
Typical delivery is two to four weeks from kickoff. A single job cost and committed cost starter lands at the short end; a company-wide rollout with row-level security by job and division sits at the longer end. Your written scope states the delivery date before you commit to anything.
For 30 days after delivery we fix refresh failures, correct measures that disagree with your job cost reports, adjust visuals your project managers find awkward, and answer questions from named users. It is included in the fixed fee, not billed hourly, and it starts the day the reports go live.
Book a free consultation
Get more from the Microsoft tools you already pay for
Tell us what you’re trying to fix — a report, an approval process, an intranet, a Copilot rollout. We scope it as a fixed-fee project, you approve, and a senior engineer delivers in 2–4 weeks.
- Fixed-fee scope agreed before any work starts
- Senior, US-based Microsoft engineers — no handoffs
- Typical 2–4 week delivery
- 30 days of post-delivery hypercare included
The fastest way to reach us is the form — tell us the task and we’ll reply within one business day.