Stage 6 of 6: Review your Reports

This is the final step in the NextMinute onboarding tour, and it covers the reporting side of the app. As you'll have noticed by clicking Reports in the bottom left, there are a number of different reports in NextMinute, all with a slightly different purpose. We'll just run through the core ones you'll use to begin with, in the same order as the video: the Back Costing Report, the Job WIP Report, the Job Charges (Detailed) Report and the Timesheet by User by Day Report.

1. Check job profitability with your Back Costing Report

Check job profitability → Back Costing Feature

The Back Costing Report lives inside a job, under Reports in the top right. It compares your quote (your estimated cost, made up of all the buy rates in that quote, which is the total cost to your business) against your actual costs, meaning every charge that's been added so far. From those two numbers it works out your cost variance (what's left to spend) and your estimated revenue (what the customer is paying).

The top line of the report is the overall job summary, but underneath that it breaks the same figures down by each section and stage of your quote. So if you're halfway through a job and allocated, say, 51 hours to it but have already burned 30, you can drill straight into the sections to see exactly where that labour went and why. That's the kind of detail that backs up decisions you make out in the field.

Once you start invoicing out of NextMinute, the report also starts accumulating your gross profit and margin to date. These figures only appear once NextMinute knows you're actually being paid for the work, so keep an eye on this report as the job progresses, not just at the end when it's too late to act on what you see.

💡 Tip: This isn't only for quoted jobs. On charge up jobs, consider adding a budget as a quote even if you never send it to the customer. It doesn't cost you anything and gives you the same report to keep yourself accountable.

2. Track work in progress with the Job WIP Report

Track work in progress → WIP (Work In Progress) Report

Go to Reports and select Job WIP Report. You can run this on a month to month basis, for example as at the 30th of April, and it gives you a snapshot of every active job so you can see how each is tracking against its budget and its invoicing.

The report compares your quoted value, estimated costs and actual costs to work out roughly how far through each job you are, shown as a % Complete column. NextMinute uses that percentage to calculate a Target Invoiced amount, meaning how much you should have billed the customer for the work done so far. Comparing that target against what you've actually invoiced shows whether you're ahead or behind on your progress claims, and the report also flags any unbilled charges so you can spot billable work that hasn't made it onto an invoice yet.

Overall, this report is about three things: monitoring job profitability, managing cash flow and making sure your invoicing keeps pace with the work being completed.

💡 Tip: Go to Admin → Settings → Reports and turn on Run Monthly Snapshots so this report updates automatically on the last day of each month.

3. Get detailed charge breakdowns with the Job Charges (Detailed) Report

Get detailed charge breakdowns → Job Actual Charges

Under Reports, you'll notice there are a few different job charges reports. This one gives you the most flexibility, because you can choose how it's grouped based on what you actually care about; for example, by charge type (Labour, Materials, Other or Disbursements), then by User, then by Date. You can run it across multiple jobs at once, or just pick a single job if that's all you need.

Once the report has run, use the filter options on the right to show or hide things like the username, tasks or charge types, then click Preview to regenerate it with those filters applied. The report gives you a job summary (total Labour, Materials, Disbursements and any other charges) and drills into whichever groupings you chose, so you can see, for instance, exactly which dates a particular person logged time and at what buy rate, sell rate and total cost.

This report is handy as a proof of work for a customer too. If you're sending it externally, hide the sell price and buy price columns, preview it, then download it as a PDF or print it. It also exports to CSV or Excel if you want to do further analysis, like building your own pivot tables.

4. Check your team's time with the Timesheet by User by Day Report

Check your team's time → Access Reports

This last report sits under Timesheet Reports, and you can also reach it by going into Timesheets and clicking Reports in the top right corner. It breaks down every timesheet entry by day, per user, with each page in the report representing one person and listing every date they've logged time under, along with their total labour hours for the period.

Run this as a final pass over the crew's timesheets each week. It's a quick way to catch obvious errors, like 70 hours entered instead of 7, missing break hours, or figures that just don't look right, before they go any further. You can select multiple team members to flick between their pages, and if you've got payroll enabled in NextMinute, sync straight to payroll from here, or export the report to import into whatever payroll software you use.

💡 Tip: Make a habit of reviewing the Back Costing and Job WIP reports weekly. They're the quickest way to spot a job slipping over budget before it's too late to act.

✅ You're done when...

You've opened your key reports and can see live numbers from your own jobs.

You're up and running 🎉

That's the full loop: set up → create a job → record time → quote → invoice → review. From here, everything you do in NextMinute is a variation on these six steps.

Where to go next:

🎥 Learning Video Collection: short videos covering every topic in the tour. View videos

📚 Full Knowledge Base: deeper articles on scheduling, purchase orders, supplier bills and more. Browse the Knowledge Base

💬 Contact Support or a Training Expert: we're here to help. Request Support