5 Power BI Reports Every Trade Business Should Have
If you're running a trade or field service business, you already know that gut feel only gets you so far. At some point you need to see the numbers. Which jobs are making you money? Which ones are costing you? Are your technicians being used effectively? Is your quoting process actually converting?
Power BI is one of the best tools for answering these questions. But most trade businesses either don't know where to start, or they've tried and got stuck on the technical side of getting their data in.
Here are the five Power BI reports that every trade business should have, what they tell you, why they matter, and how to get them up and running without needing a data team.
1. Job Profitability Report
What it shows: A breakdown of every job comparing what you estimated against what it actually cost to deliver. Revenue, labour costs, material costs, subcontractor costs, and the resulting margin, all in one view.
Why it matters: This is the report that tells you whether you're actually making money, not at the company level (you can see that in Xero), but at the individual job level. And that's where the real insight lives.
Most trade businesses can tell you their overall turnover and rough margin. Far fewer can tell you which specific jobs made money and which ones didn't. Without this report, unprofitable jobs hide inside profitable months, and you never find out why margins are tighter than they should be.
What to look for:
- Jobs where actual costs exceeded estimates by more than 10-15%. These are your scope creep or estimating issues.
- Patterns by job type, customer, or technician. If one type of work consistently underperforms, your pricing may need adjusting.
- Material cost overruns versus labour overruns. They have different causes and different fixes.
GridTec, an electrical business in Leeds, started using this exact report through Tugger to compare original estimates to actual costs across their projects. It gave them the ability to stay on track throughout a job's life cycle, something they couldn't do before. Read their story
2. Resource Utilisation Report
What it shows: How effectively your technicians and engineers are being used. Billable hours versus total available hours, broken down by person, team, week, or month.
Why it matters: Labour is your biggest cost. If your team is only 60% utilised when they could be at 80%, that's 20% of your wage bill generating no revenue. On a team of 10 technicians, that could be tens of thousands of pounds a year in lost productivity.
Most trade businesses have a rough sense of how busy the team is, but rough isn't good enough. You need to know who's fully booked, who has capacity, and whether your scheduling is actually matching supply to demand.
What to look for:
- Team members consistently below 70% utilisation. Is it a scheduling issue, a skills gap, or a capacity mismatch?
- Utilisation trends over time. Is it improving or declining? Seasonal patterns are normal, but a steady downward trend needs investigating.
- The gap between "logged time" and "billable time." If technicians are logging hours but a large percentage isn't billable, you've got an efficiency problem.
3. Quote-to-Job Conversion Report
What it shows: How many quotes you're sending out, how many convert into actual jobs, the conversion rate over time, and the value of won versus lost quotes.
Why it matters: Your quoting process is the front end of your revenue pipeline. If you're sending out 50 quotes a month and only winning 10, that's an 80% loss rate. The question is why, and this report helps you find out.
Without tracking conversion rates, you can't tell whether you have a pricing problem, a speed problem (quoting too slowly), or a targeting problem (quoting the wrong work). You also can't measure whether changes to your quoting process are actually making a difference.
What to look for:
- Overall conversion rate and whether it's trending up or down.
- Conversion rate by quote value. Are you winning the small jobs but losing the big ones?
- Average time from quote sent to job won. Speed matters. If your competitors are quoting faster, they're winning the work.
- Conversion rate by lead source. Where are your best opportunities coming from?
4. Scheduled Maintenance and SLA Report
What it shows: A complete view of upcoming, in-progress, and overdue maintenance work. Which visits are on schedule, which are slipping, and whether you're meeting your SLA commitments.
Why it matters: For any trade business with maintenance contracts, this report is critical. Missed maintenance visits damage customer relationships, create compliance risks, and can trigger SLA penalties. But keeping track of hundreds or thousands of scheduled visits across multiple sites is almost impossible without proper reporting.
Envirotech FM built a reactive maintenance report with Tugger that they now use every day. It lets them monitor response times, see which jobs haven't been assigned engineers, and check which jobs are in danger of missing deadlines. Read their story
What to look for:
- Overdue maintenance visits, grouped by site, technician, or customer.
- SLA compliance rates. What percentage of jobs are being completed within the agreed timeframe?
- Upcoming maintenance workload. Is next month's schedule manageable, or are you heading for a crunch?
- Repeat callouts to the same site. This could indicate a deeper issue that planned maintenance isn't catching.
5. Cash Flow and Invoicing Report
What it shows: Invoiced revenue over time, outstanding invoices, aged receivables, and payment patterns. Ideally, this combines your job management data (from Simpro) with your accounting data (from Xero or QuickBooks) for the full picture.
Why it matters: Revenue means nothing if the cash isn't coming in. Trade businesses live and die by cash flow, and this report tells you exactly where you stand. How much have you invoiced? How much is overdue? Which customers are consistently paying late? And how does invoiced revenue compare to the work you've actually completed?
This is one of the most powerful reports you can build when you combine Simpro with Xero through Tugger. Simpro tells you what work has been done. Xero tells you what's been invoiced and paid. Together, they give you a view of cash flow that neither system can provide on its own.
Thompsons Group did exactly this, combining their Simpro and Xero data into unified dashboards through Tugger. The result was clearer insights, better team productivity, and stronger data-driven decision making across the business. Read their story
What to look for:
- Aged receivables. How much is overdue, and by how long?
- Average debtor days. Are customers paying faster or slower than they used to?
- Invoiced versus completed work. If you've finished jobs but not invoiced them, that's money sitting on the table.
- Revenue trends by month or quarter. Are you growing, plateauing, or declining?
How to Get These Reports Without a Data Team
Here's the catch with Power BI: the tool itself is powerful, but getting your data into it is where most trade businesses get stuck. Connecting to Simpro's API is complex. Building a data warehouse is expensive. And designing the reports from scratch takes Power BI skills that most businesses don't have in-house.
That's what Tugger is built for.
Tugger connects to your Simpro account (and Xero, HubSpot, and other systems) and automatically syncs your data into a secure warehouse. You get a suite of ready-made Power BI reports covering all five of the areas above, and they work straight out of the box. No API setup, no coding, no data modelling.
You can use the reports as they are, customise them, or build your own. And if you need a quick answer without opening Power BI at all, Tugger's AI Insights lets you ask questions in natural language using tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.
ARH Group, a mechanical and electrical building services company, chose Tugger partly because the pre-built reports meant they didn't have to start from scratch. As their Commercial Business Partner put it, getting data out of the business is one challenge, but building the reports is another one entirely. Tugger does both. Read their story
Getting Started
- Sign up for a free trial
- Connect your Simpro account (and Xero if you use it), no coding required
- Open your ready-made Power BI reports and start seeing your data immediately
No contract, AI Insights included on all plans, and a UK-based support team on hand to help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need Power BI experience to use these reports?
No. Tugger's ready-made reports work straight out of the box. You open Power BI, connect to Tugger's warehouse, and the dashboards are there. You can customise them if you want, but you don't have to.
Do I need Power BI Pro?
You can build and view reports using the free Power BI Desktop app. If you want to share reports with colleagues via the Power BI Service, you'll need Power BI Pro licences (or a Premium capacity). Tugger works with both.
Can I combine Simpro data with Xero in the same report?
Yes. Tugger connects to both and stores the data in the same warehouse. The cash flow report in particular is much more powerful when it combines job data from Simpro with financial data from Xero.
What if I want a report that isn't in the ready-made suite?
You can build custom reports in Power BI using the data in Tugger's warehouse. You have access to all of your Simpro data, so any report you can imagine, you can build. And if you need help, our team can assist.
Can I get answers without Power BI?
Yes. Tugger's AI Insights lets you ask your data questions in natural language using Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. If you just need a quick answer ("What's our utilisation rate this month?"), you don't need to open Power BI at all.
How do I share these Power BI reports with my team, and what licensing do we need?
You can build and view the dashboards in the free Power BI Desktop app. To share them via the Power BI Service (so colleagues can view them online), you'll need Power BI Pro licences or a Premium capacity. Tugger works with both, so you can choose the sharing model that fits your team.
Do I have to connect both Simpro and Xero to get value, or can I start with just Simpro?
You can start with Simpro alone and get immediate value from the ready-made Job Profitability, Resource Utilisation, Quote-to-Job Conversion, and Maintenance/SLA reports. The Cash Flow/Invoicing report is most powerful when you also connect Xero, so you can see the full path from completed work to cash collected. You can add Xero later without rebuilding reports.
What practical actions do businesses take after reviewing these five reports?
Common next steps include tightening estimates or scope control on jobs where actuals exceed estimates by 10-15%+, adjusting pricing for underperforming job types or customers, rebalancing schedules and coaching low-utilisation technicians, speeding up quoting to improve win rates, prioritising overdue maintenance to protect SLAs, invoicing completed-but-unbilled work, and targeting late payers to reduce debtor days.
How customisable are Tugger's ready-made dashboards?
They work out of the box, but you can tailor them or build new ones in Power BI using data Tugger syncs into a secure warehouse. Typical customisations include focusing views by job type, customer, or technician, adding trends over time, or extending measures you already track. If you need help, Tugger's UK-based team can assist, and AI Insights lets you ask quick questions without opening Power BI.
How much does it cost?
Plans start from £125/month with no contract. See pricing
Ready to see these reports with your own data? Start your free trial or book a demo
