Margin and pricing analysis
You can’t say which orders make money.
We tie real cost back to each order: material, labor, freight, and the time nobody logs. Most ERPs already hold the data but won’t report it that way. We rebuild margin and pricing analysis so leadership can see what a job earns while there’s still time to act on it.
Does this sound like your business?
Different companies, different words, same problem underneath.
- You see the margin number at the end of the month, and you can’t trace it to anything you could have changed.
- Pricing gets set off last year’s cost and a feel for the market.
- Nobody can tell you which customers are worth keeping at current prices.
- A job that felt profitable turns out not to have been, and nobody can say why.
- Quoting is somebody’s judgment, and that judgment leaves at five o’clock.
What the work involves
The data is usually already in the building. The work is making it agree with itself and putting it where the decision gets made.
Agree on what cost means
Material, labor, freight, and the time nobody logs. Before any report is worth building, the business has to agree on what goes into the number, or nobody believes the output.
Get it out of the ERP
Hands-on work in Macola and Prophet 21. The pieces sit across modules that were never meant to be read together, which is why the standard reports don’t answer the question.
Cut it the ways you decide
By order, by customer, by product, by job. The cuts that matter are the ones you’d actually act on, not every slice the tool can produce.
Put it in front of leadership
A read-out leadership can get through in ten minutes, on a schedule, instead of a report somebody has to remember to run.
Questions about margin and pricing analysis
How do I find out which orders actually make money?
Tie real cost back to each order: material, labor, freight, and the time nobody logs. Most ERPs already hold the data but will not report it that way without work. We rebuild margin and pricing analysis so leadership can see what an order earns while there is still time to act on it.
Why does my margin look fine on the P&L but bad on individual jobs?
Because the P&L averages everything together. Strong jobs cover weak ones and the net looks acceptable, so nothing gets investigated. Margin by order, customer and product breaks the average apart and shows which work is carrying the business and which work is quietly draining it.
Can I get margin by order out of Macola or Prophet 21?
Usually yes. The data is generally already in the ERP, but it is spread across modules that were never designed to be read together, so standard reports won’t show it. The work is assembling those pieces into one view and agreeing on how cost is defined before anyone trusts the number.
How is this different from what my accountant produces?
Accounting tells you what happened after the period closes, accurately and too late to change it. This is operational: the same costs attached to orders and customers while the work is still in front of you, so pricing and quoting decisions can use it.
Tell us what the numbers won’t tell you.
We’ll tell you honestly whether the data to answer it already exists in your ERP.