How To Review P&L Analysis And Project Profitability
P&L analysis shows what a project earned against what it cost — estimated versus actual, with your gross profit and margin at the bottom. The same breakdown is available across multiple projects in Reports.
When would I use this?
- Checking whether a job made what you expected before closing it out
- Finding where costs ran over on a job that came in thin
- Reviewing profitability across a month or a quarter
- Seeing profit with and without commissions
Before you start
Requires Financials access. P&L analysis and the Reports financials table are limited to users with that access.
Two things also need to be done first, or your numbers won’t be real:
- Account for all revenue — change orders, discounts, and anything outside the original sold estimates
- Complete your job costing — actual costs recorded against each estimated item
See How To Track Job Costs and Add Expenses.
Where is P&L analysis?
Open the project, go to the Financials tab, and find the P&L Analysis section. It sits alongside the financial summary, invoices, job costing, and commissions sections.
What’s in the revenue section?
| Column | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Estimated | The estimates sold on the proposal — including upgrades, add-ons, fees, and discounts |
| Actual | Those sold estimates plus anything that changed afterward — change orders, discounts given during the project |
A variance here means revenue moved after the sale.
What’s in the cost section?
Estimated and actual for:
- Material costs
- Labor costs
- Other costs
The actual column comes from your job costing. If you haven’t recorded actuals, there’s nothing to compare against and the variance is meaningless.
This is usually where the real variance lives. A project that estimated $13,000 in costs and came in at $11,000 has $1,800 more margin than expected — and you only see that if the costing is done.
What else is on the P&L?
- Commissions — commissions on the project at Pending, Approved, or Paid status. Cancelled commissions don’t appear.
- Total gross profit
- Profit margin
- A breakdown chart showing material, labor, other expenses, and total profit. Hover over any segment for its value.
How do I see profitability across multiple projects?
Go to Reports → Financials and open the Project P&L and Commissions table.
How do I filter the table?
- Projects you want to include
- Date range — by when they entered a stage or status, or ignore dates entirely
- Commission status
- Project source
- Salesperson
Set the time window in the top right — preset ranges or a custom range, segmented daily, weekly, or monthly.
What does the table show?
- Job number
- Project name
- Team members by role
- Work type and work track
- Stage and status
- Actual revenue
- Payments received
- Percent of total collected
- Actual costs
- Total commission amount
- Commission recipients
- Commission status
- Profit without commission
- Margin without commission
- Profit with commission
- Margin with commission
Use the show/hide column icon in the top right to choose which columns appear.
Can I see the detail behind the totals?
Yes. Actual revenue and actual costs both expand:
- Revenue breaks down into estimates, change orders, add-ons, fees, and discounts
- Costs break down into material, labor, and other
Where do I see the aggregate?
Everything sums to totals at the bottom of the table — revenue, payments received, expenses, and profitability across every project matching your filters.
Can I export the data?
Yes. Export to CSV or Excel, or refresh the table if a project has been updated since you loaded it.
Tips and gotchas
- An uncosted job shows a profit that isn’t real. If actuals were never recorded, the P&L is comparing your estimate against nothing. Job costing isn’t paperwork — it’s what makes every number on this page true.
- Pending commissions are already in your margin. Profit-with-commission includes commissions at Pending, Approved, and Paid status — so a commission someone created but never approved is already pulling your margin down. Cancelled commissions are excluded. If a margin looks worse than you expected, check the commissions section before you go hunting through costs.
- Look at profit with and without commission. The table separates them for a reason. Margin without commission tells you whether the job was priced and run well. Margin with commission tells you what the business actually kept.
- Use the variance to fix estimating, not to assign blame. A pattern of material overruns on steep roofs means your estimating template is wrong, not that your crew wasted shingles. The variance column is a feedback loop into how you bid.
- Filter by salesperson when margins drift. The table filters by rep. If one person’s jobs consistently come in thinner, that’s a pricing or discounting conversation worth having before it becomes a year.
- Check revenue variance as closely as cost variance. Revenue moving between estimated and actual means change orders or discounts. Both are fine — unrecorded, they’re a job that looks less profitable than it was, or more.
- Export before a leadership conversation. The totals row across a filtered date range is the number you want in front of people, and it takes one click.
- Percent of total collected is your cash position, not your profit. A profitable job with 40% collected is still money you don’t have. Worth watching alongside margin.