--- title: "Shop Reporting & Analytics for Custom CNC Shops | OpenSpindle" description: "Revenue, profit per project, throughput, and utilization reports for custom CNC and fabrication shops. See the numbers that actually matter to your bottom line." canonical: https://openspindle.com/features/reporting --- # Run Your Shop by the Numbers See project profit, machine performance, and cash flow in one place so decisions are driven by data, not guesswork. ## Why Gut Feel Is Not Enough Any More Manufacturers that implement job-level reporting and dashboards improve pricing accuracy, control costs, and spot issues earlier, which boosts profitability. - **Job profit stays hidden:** Most shops rely on basic financial statements and scattered spreadsheets, which makes it hard to tie actual job costs to specific projects and customers. - **Machine ROI is a guess:** Without clear visibility into machine utilization and related revenue, it is difficult to understand which machines or lines truly earn their keep. - **Surprises hit hard:** Cash flow forecasts often live in ad hoc spreadsheets, so owners see problems late instead of weeks or months in advance. "We thought our kitchen jobs were our best work. When we finally ran the numbers, closets were twice as profitable per hour. We never would have known without job-level reporting." -- Owner, 11-person custom millwork shop ## Reporting in 30 Seconds From dashboard setup to drilling into job P&L, everything stays connected. 1. **Custom dashboards for your shop:** Build dashboards that pull from projects, time tracking, invoicing, and equipment so you see KPIs that match how you run your shop. 2. **Project and client P&L:** Combine labor, materials, and machine time with invoice data to see profit and loss per job and per client rather than only at the company level. 3. **Machine ROI and performance:** Use utilization data and revenue from jobs to understand which machines deliver the strongest return and where to focus maintenance or investment. 4. **Cash flow views and forecasts:** Connect open quotes, milestones, and invoices to project likely cash inflows and outflows over the coming weeks and months. ## What This Gets You - **True job and client profitability:** See which work makes money and which work quietly erodes margin so you can adjust pricing or say no. - **Smarter investment decisions:** Machine ROI and utilization data inform where to buy, retrofit, or retire equipment. - **Fewer cash flow surprises:** Forward-looking cash views help you plan hiring, equipment purchases, and distributions with more confidence. ## Everything Included Core functions and shop workflows, purpose-built for data-driven manufacturing. - **Custom dashboards:** Configure tiles and charts for job profit, machine performance, and financial KPIs that matter to your shop. - **Job and client P&L:** Report on revenue, costs, and margin by project, client, work type, or date range. - **Machine ROI tracking:** Blend utilization data and allocated revenue or cost savings to understand machine return over time. - **Cash flow reporting:** See expected inflows from quotes and invoices alongside known outflows like payroll and material purchases. - **Export and sharing:** Export reports for your accountant or leadership team in common formats. **Shop workflows covered:** - Reviewing last quarter's kitchen jobs to see which designs and clients delivered the best margins. - Comparing CNC routers by utilization and revenue before deciding which machine to upgrade. - Looking at the next 12 weeks of cash in and out to plan hiring or major purchases. ## Works With Reporting connects seamlessly to the rest of your OpenSpindle workflow. - [Project Management](https://openspindle.com/features/projects.md): Feeds real labor and schedule data into job profit reporting. - [Invoicing and Cost Library](https://openspindle.com/features/invoicing.md): Uses actual costs and invoices to compute margin and cash flow. - [Equipment Management](https://openspindle.com/features/equipment.md): Supplies machine utilization for ROI and performance dashboards. ## Ready to See Your Numbers Clearly? Join shops using OpenSpindle to run by data instead of gut feel. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What kind of reporting does OpenSpindle provide for shop owners? OpenSpindle reporting gives shop owners configurable dashboards that pull from projects, time tracking, invoicing, and equipment data. You can view job and client profitability, machine utilization and ROI, team hours and overtime, overdue invoices, and forward-looking cash flow, all from data that is already in the system rather than data you have to manually compile. ### Can I see profit and loss per job or client in OpenSpindle? Yes. OpenSpindle combines actual labor costs from time tracking, material costs from the cost library, and machine time with your invoicing data so you can see profit and loss per job instead of only at the company level. This is the difference between knowing your overall gross margin and knowing which jobs, job types, and customers are actually making you money. ### What kind of dashboards can I build in OpenSpindle? You can build dashboards showing project margins, machine utilization and ROI, team hours by person or role, overdue invoices, and basic cash flow views. Dashboard tiles pull from the live data in your projects, time tracking, equipment, and invoicing modules so the numbers are current without any manual export or update. ### How does reporting help with cash flow planning? Reporting connects open quotes, active project milestones, and scheduled invoices so you can see likely cash inflows alongside known outflows like payroll and material purchases over the coming weeks and months. This makes it easier to time major purchases, plan hiring, and avoid the cash crunches that come from completing work without a clear picture of when the money will arrive. ### How does OpenSpindle calculate machine ROI? Machine ROI in OpenSpindle blends utilization data from the equipment module with revenue allocated to jobs run on that machine. You can see how many hours a machine ran, what jobs it produced, and what those jobs generated in revenue or margin, then compare that against maintenance costs and acquisition costs over time to understand whether the machine is earning its keep. ### Can I report on which job types or work categories are most profitable? Yes. You can filter and group profit reports by project type, customer, date range, or work category. Over time this reveals patterns: kitchens might carry better margin than trim packages, certain customers might consistently request costly changes, or a specific template might be consistently underpriced. Pricing and business development decisions improve when they are based on this kind of historical job data. ### Can I export reports for my accountant or bookkeeper? Yes. Reports and data views can be exported in common formats for your accountant, operations manager, or business partner. You do not need to rebuild a summary from scratch for every financial review. The data that is already in OpenSpindle is formatted and ready to hand off. ### How is OpenSpindle reporting different from what I can already see in QuickBooks? QuickBooks shows you company-level financials: total revenue, total expenses, and overall margin. It does not know which specific job, machine, or customer drove those numbers. OpenSpindle reporting adds the job-level layer: which project made money, which machine earned its cost, which customer is consistently profitable, and where in the production process margin is getting consumed. Both have a role, and OpenSpindle is designed to complement your accounting system rather than replace it. ### How current is the data in OpenSpindle reports? Reports pull from live data. Labor hours logged this morning show in the job costing view this morning. Invoices sent today are reflected in the cash flow view today. There is no end-of-day sync, no manual refresh, and no batch processing delay. The number you see when you open a dashboard is the number as of that moment. ### How does reporting help me make better pricing decisions? When you can see the actual margin on every closed job over the past six months, patterns emerge that change how you price. If your commercial casework jobs consistently hit 28% margin but your custom kitchen jobs come in at 14%, that is a pricing or scoping problem that the cost library can address. Reporting is what surfaces the evidence. Most shops running on gut feel are surprised by what the data shows once they can see it clearly.