Construction & contracting
The business was making money. One of its jobs wasn't.
The point
Knowing your overall profit isn't enough if you don't know where that profit is coming from.
A building contractor had several projects running at the same time.
Overall, the accounts said the business was profitable.
But that wasn't the full story.
Looking at each job on its own
We started tracking each contract separately through Xero Projects, looking at the sales and costs attributable to individual jobs.
That's when the problem became visible.
One contract was making a substantial loss — but profitable jobs elsewhere in the business were hiding it.
The lesson wasn't “use Xero Projects”.
The lesson: Knowing your overall profit isn't enough if you don't know where that profit is coming from.
