The WIP Health Check report helps you to get insights into project overservicing. One of the key principles of this report is that the % of time recorded on a job is not the same as the % the the job is completed.

You can log 90% of the planned time while you only got 50% of the job done. Or the other way around. The Health Check report lets you record how far through the project you are in order to calculate the projected outcome.

The report compares the projected outcome against to individual metrics, the budget and the planned work. Sometimes a project is sold at a lower price than it is planned, for instance because you decided you really wanted to do this project for a new customer. The report shows you both the budgeted and planned value and highlights how much higher or lower the planned value is than the budget.

The projected total – how much we think the job is going to be worth when finished – is compared individually with the budget and the planned work.

The colours help with the readability of the report.

The Blue columns refer to Budget

The Green columns refer to Planned Work

The Yellow columns are the ones that can be modified manually by the user.

The Spent to date is just the sell value of the time entries, the expenses and purchase orders already recorded on the job.

Let's use an example: The job's budget is $10k. It's a new client. The planned work is actually $12k, but we gave them a warm welcome discount. We have recorded $4k in time and expenses so far. So spent to date, is $4k.

This value is one of the key metrics in the report. The % complete is a value estimated by the account manager of how far through the project you are. It is fundamentally different from the amount recorded on the job to date, because not all recorded time is billable.

So our earlier job is worth $10k and we have recorded $4k so far, that means we haven't used up the budget. Great!, right? Well, it depends. How far through the job are we really? If we're already 50% through, that's awesome – it means we're getting the job done quicker than expected. If we're only 10% through, we can say we have used up too much time already. So not the time recorded, but the the Percent Completed is what determines how well we're doing.

The Percent Completed is not an easy number to come up with. While for some jobs you may find it easy to simply fill in a percentage, for others you might need some help to get to the right value. Click this icon next to Percent Complete to see the job plan:

You can use the job plan to work out the Percent Completed in a slightly more 'scientific' approach rather than to pluck a number out of thin air.

You can see each item and each phase listed in the job plan view, with the Used Value and Planned Value and due date for each item and phase. You can also see the status of each item and phase on the left.

Next there are 2 columns with Percentages. In the Job Plan column, wayahead calculated the % complete based on the current status of the job plan. In the Manual column, you can fill in your own custom values.

Changing the % of a phase, updates the % of all items in the phase. Equally, updating the % on an item, recalculates the phase total. You can use the arrow key -> to overwrite your manual values with the precalculated values. Notes that completed items are always marked as 100% and can not be changed.

Once you are done, just click on of the green buttons to use that value as the job's Percent Completed.

We go back to our earlier example. Let's say I believe we have completed 30% of the work, then we can say we have earned $3k to date (30% of the budget).

So you can see that this value disregards the Spent to Date. The only thing that counts is the Percent Completed and the Budget.

This value represents how much more we'll need to spend to complete the work. Once again, this value can be filled in manually or automatically.

We go on from the example above. If we completed 30% of the work to be done ($12k), then we can assume we still have 70% of the job left to do. As soon as we change Percent Completed to 30%, wayahead will suggest we have $8.4k ($12k * 0.7) remaining to do.

If the Spend to Completion was not set, wayahead won't even ask – it will just populate the Spend to Completion automatically.

But you don't have to stick with the automatic calculations. Especially when a job is near its completion, you may have a pretty good idea of how much time remains. At some point – regardless of the % completed or % remaining, you just know how much more it will take to finish the job.

For example, you know it will take one final correction round to finish up and you know the correction round will take half a day @ $100/hr. Rather than tweaking the % complete, you can just fill in the exact number you want.

This is the magic number we're after!

The Projected total is calculated by adding Spent to Date and Spend to Completion.

It tells us how much we are likely to spend in total to finish the job.

The next 2 columns compare the outcome to the budget and the planned value. The $ value shows how much more (bad!) or less (good!) you'll spend than budgeted or planned. The % shows how much you're going to go over stay under budget or planning.

It's recommended to order the report by one of these columns, putting the jobs that are going over at the top of you focus!

Also note that the footer shows the total over or underspending on your WIP at this time.

This is the sum of issued invoices and what % of the budget has been invoiced so far.

So $950 / 63% means you have invoiced $950 so far that that's 63% of the job's budget of $1,500.

Generally speaking, agencies will try to invoice the work completed, at least by the end of the current month. We don't want to spend $5k on a job and leave that open until the job is done.

Invoiced vs Earned will compare how much more or less you invoiced.

In the last example, if I have invoiced $950 but Earned to date is $1,250, then Invoiced vs Earned will show -$300 – we have invoiced $300 less than we earned to date.

Negative values show as red, positive values are green. We prefer to invoice more than we spend – it's better to owe the client time than for the client to owe you money.

You can easily search the WIP list or filter it by job lead, so that each job lead can populate the data on their own jobs.