Results: forecast, revenue and reporting
Read a project's profit and loss
See a project's revenue, cost and margin from its ledger, the margin it will end with, and each task's cost against budget and estimate at completion.
1 min readLast updated
In this article
A project's profit and loss answers two questions: is the job making money now, and will it when it is finished? Both come from the same ledger rows the accounts use.
Open it
Open the project and its Profit & loss tab.
Leave From and To empty for the whole project, or set them to see a period.
What you see
The contract value, revenue, cost and margin to date, from the ledger rows charged to the project.
The approved estimate at completion, the margin at completion (contract value − estimate) and the % complete. Without an approved estimate these are empty; see revise the estimate at completion.
By account: revenue, cost of activity and expenses, account by account.
By task: each task's revenue, budget, cost to date, commitments, estimate at completion and the variance between budget and estimate.
Revenue includes what revenue recognition adds or removes, and cost includes any loss provision, so a loss-making project shows its whole expected loss.
Common questions
Why is the margin at completion lower than the margin to date? Work done so far earned more than the rest will: the estimate expects the remaining tasks to cost more of their value.