Short answer. Post-calculation compares the actual project costs with your estimate and shows whether a job was profitable. The problem is the timing: after the fact there is nothing left to adjust. Tracking margin per project day by day does not require an ERP, but it does require discipline in recording hours, materials and additional work per project, and a process that flags deviations immediately instead of only at the final settlement.
A project looks profitable on paper. At handover it turns out to be loss-making. And you never saw it coming.
That rarely comes from one big mistake. It is many small deviations that add up unnoticed: an extra hour here, a forgotten material item, a trip that was never recorded anywhere.
Why after the fact is too late
Post-calculation is indispensable, but if you only do it after handover, it is an autopsy. The hours have been spent, the materials have been used, and the client has already received the final invoice.
What you want is not an autopsy but a heart-rate monitor. Tracking margin day by day, so that a deviation stands out while you can still do something about it: adjust the planning, inform the client about additional work, or decide internally to tackle it more cleverly.
Do you need an ERP for this?
No. For useful post-calculation you do not need a heavy ERP, but discipline in recording: recurring base data, per project and per day. Hours, materials, transport, additional work.
The bottleneck is not the software but the input. If that recording is scattered across work orders, Excel and someone's memory, your post-calculation will not be right, no matter how good your tool is.
Where standard registration falls short
Plenty of construction software offers post-calculation. If your process fits in it, use it. The limit lies where your recording comes from separate sources that never come together: the engineer's work-order app, the planning in Excel, the purchasing in Exact. Then the software misses half of the actual costs, and it shows a margin that is not right.
On top of that comes allocation. Which hours, which materials and which trip belong to which project? That is the same logic as real margin per product and channel: without everything being allocated per project, you are steering on a phantom margin.
What this requires
The goal is a grip on your project margin while the project is running, with less manual work and figures that are right. That is why I first review your recording and calculation process, because some steps have grown over time and can be done more smartly. What remains, bringing together hours, materials and additional work per project into a margin that runs along day by day, I build. This has to be calculated one way or another. The question is whether it cannot be done more smartly today than only at the final settlement.
Frequently asked questions
What is post-calculation and how do I do it?
Post-calculation is comparing the actual project costs (hours, materials, transport, additional work) with your estimate. You make it useful by recording those costs per project and per day, not only adding them up at handover.
Why does a project turn out to be loss-making after the fact?
Usually not because of one mistake, but because of many small deviations that add up unnoticed: extra hours, a forgotten material item, an unrecorded trip. Without daily tracking you only see it when it is too late.
How do I track margin per project day by day?
By weighing the actual costs against the estimate weekly or at each milestone and acting on deviations. That does not have to be complicated, but it does require hours, materials and additional work to be recorded consistently per project.
Do I need an ERP for post-calculation?
No. You need discipline in recording and a process that brings the data together per project. An ERP only helps once the input is right; without consistent recording, even an ERP shows a margin that is not right.
Further reading
- Your margin leaks away between the work order and the invoice
- Retyping your work order into your invoice is the most expensive ten minutes of your day
- Real margin per product, channel and supplier
I am Ricardo Theijs of RNT Projects. With a background in enterprise process management, I build the margin and allocation logic that separate registration does not deliver. I will tell you honestly when a standard package is enough.
Running into this yourself?
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