Some businesses do not just sell a product — they deliver a project. A plumbing contractor fits out a building. An installer puts solar panels on a factory roof. An interior firm turns an empty floor into an office. A dealer supplies and installs equipment across several sites.
Projects have their own way of losing money: material that leaves the warehouse and never comes back, extra work done on site that is never billed, and a final reckoning that nobody can reconstruct.
Where project margin goes
- Material issued to the site is not tracked against the project, so leftovers vanish and shortfalls are re-bought.
- Variations — "while you're here, can you also…" — are done and forgotten.
- Work is recorded in a site diary, if at all, so billing depends on memory.
- Several projects share one store, and costs blur between them.
What to record for each project
- The project — customer, site address, scope.
- Material issued to it, used, and returned.
- Work orders for each piece of work, including additional work agreed on site.
- People who worked on it, and when.
- Billing milestones against what has actually been done.
How projects work in Zaqnet
Zaqnet's Service app includes projects for site work — plumbers, electricians, contractors, architects, developers and installers:
- Each project belongs to a customer and a site, with its work organised as work orders.
- Stock issued for the job is recorded against it from inventory held across your locations, so you can see what went to each site.
- Additional work is recorded as its own work order when it is agreed, so it can be priced from your service catalogue and billed.
- Teams in the field record their work in GroundLink, and the office follows every project in ControlRoom.
On a project, anything not written down on the day becomes a negotiation at the end.
A simple discipline that works
- No material leaves without a project. Even a box of fittings.
- Every variation gets a work order before it is done, not after.
- Close each project with a material return, and look at the difference.
- Bill in milestones tied to completed work orders, not a single final invoice.
Use the calculator below to estimate what untracked material and unbilled work cost you.