What Should a Builder Financial Dashboard Actually Show?
Most builders can answer questions about one project at a time. Answering them across several completed jobs usually means rebuilding a spreadsheet from job cost reports, draw history, closing statements and memory.
This guide covers what belongs in that view, and how the same measures should be defined on every project so the comparison holds up.
Free. Send one project to start.
Nine measures, applied the same way
- Hard cost / SF
Construction cost per square foot, calculated the same way on every project.
- Total cost / SF
Land, hard, soft and financing per square foot — the number that decides pricing.
- Profit
Dollars produced by the project after all costs, not gross revenue less hard cost.
- Margin
Profit as a percentage of revenue, comparable across product types.
- Capital invested
Cash and equity actually put into the project, separate from total project cost.
- Construction duration
Months from start to substantial completion, because duration is a cost.
- Sales timing
Days from listing to contract to close, and what the market paid.
- Budget variance
Category-level variance ranked by dollar impact on margin.
- Financing cost
Interest and fees over the life of the project, shown as carry.
Organized around builder questions, not statement lines
Accounting systems are typically organized around transactions, entities and financial statements. A builder needs the same underlying project information arranged around different questions: which projects made money, which product types perform, where capital was tied up, and what the next budget should say. Good construction job costing is what makes that possible.
Bivvit Is Not Another Dashboard.
Bivvit is a project analysis service. It learns from completed projects, reviews active projects at meaningful checkpoints, and applies that context to the next budget. There is no generic live dashboard and no software workflow to run.
Free Project Snapshot
Send a project you already have. We'll organize the numbers, show what happened, and begin building your Project Pulse. Free.
Next Budget Check
Before construction starts, we review a proposed budget using your completed-project history and the proposed project records.
Recording the numbers versus reading them
- Records transactionsInterprets project performance
- Tracks job costsCompares job costs across projects
- Organizes cost codesFinds cost trends by category
- Produces financial reportsExplains what the project did
- Reports actual spendingExplains variance
- Focuses on individual transactions and projectsCompares your completed projects
- Records historyHelps you use history on the next project
You need accounting. Bivvit makes that data more valuable.
Related Guides
- Builder Accounting
What your books do well, and where they stop.
- Construction Job Costing
How to understand costs by job and cost code.
- Budget vs Actual
How to see where the project missed and why.
Put It Against Your Own Projects.
Send us the records from a completed project. Bivvit organizes the numbers, shows what happened, and helps you understand what to carry into the next one.
Free Project Snapshot. Every completed project makes your Project Pulse more useful.