A Guide to Driving Efficiency and Margin Through Finance

In today’s construction environment, protecting margin isn’t just about tight procurement or efficient project teams—it starts with visibility.

For finance leaders, visibility means knowing exactly where your projects stand in real time. It’s about eliminating surprises, reducing manual work, and making confident, data-driven decisions. Yet many firms are operating blind, relying on disconnected systems and retrospective reporting.

Here’s how visibility transforms financial control into commercial advantage.

Why Visibility Is Your Competitive Edge

Construction operates on tight margins. Delays, variations, and supplier issues can turn a winning bid into a loss. Visibility enables proactive intervention—before profit slips away.

With strong financial visibility, you can:

• Monitor project cash flow in real time

• Track actuals vs. budget as work progresses

• Get early warnings on margin erosion or overspend

• Deliver timely, accurate reports to stakeholders

Visibility isn’t just about reporting—it’s about control.

What’s Blocking Visibility in Construction Projects?

Too often, project and finance teams operate in silos, leading to data delays, duplication, and blind spots. The common blockers include:

• Fragmented systems: Finance, procurement, and site teams use different tools that don’t talk to each other.

• Lack of real-time data: By the time issues are flagged, they’ve already hit the bottom line.

• Spreadsheet dependency: Teams manually compile data, which increases errors and slows reporting.

These blockers make it harder to act decisively—and harder still to forecast accurately.

The Impact of Poor Visibility on Margins

When visibility is low, financial control weakens. You end up reacting instead of planning.

Key risks include:

• Missed or delayed variation claims

• Cost drift that compounds over long projects

• Firefighting at month-end, with incomplete or inconsistent data

• Inability to forecast accurately or flag margin risks early

These issues can erode profitability without warning—and are often only visible when it's too late to recover.

What ‘Good’ Looks Like

A visible project environment isn’t about more reports—it’s about connected, real-time insight that supports decision-making.

In a high-visibility setup, finance teams can:

• See project margin, committed spend, and cost-to-complete at a glance

• Track live WIP and forecast cash positions accurately

• Share performance dashboards with execs and project managers

• Set automated alerts for risk thresholds and deviations

It’s about aligning data with decision points—not just consolidating after the fact.

Visibility Starts with Finance

Finance is uniquely positioned to lead the visibility agenda. It owns the chart of accounts, the reporting cycles, and the pain of poor data.

By taking the lead, finance can:

• Standardise project financial structures across teams

• Define and track shared KPIs with operations

• Improve forecasting accuracy and scenario planning

• Reduce time spent on manual reconciliation

The result is not just better control, but a more strategic role in operational decision-making.

Tools That Deliver Clarity

Achieving visibility requires systems that are integrated, automated, and scalable.

Look for tools that:

• Connect project data to finance in real time

• Support multi-entity, multi-project reporting

• Automate AP, AR, and reconciliations

• Enable mobile or site-based data entry

• Allow for self-service dashboards and reporting

Cloud-native platforms like Sage Intacct offer modular deployment, enabling you to start with high-impact areas and expand over time.

A Roadmap to Greater Project Visibility

Transformation doesn’t need to happen all at once. A phased approach can deliver quick wins while building toward full integration.

Phase 1: Identify visibility black holes

• Manual trackers, offline approvals, delayed data

Phase 2: Standardise financial structures

• Cost codes, WIP formats, purchase order templates

Phase 3: Connect site and finance data

• Mobile capture, live WIP updates, auto approvals

Phase 4: Enable self-service and planning

• Dashboards, rolling forecasts, board-ready insights

Focus on areas where poor visibility carries the highest cost—like variation control, project profitability, or AP cycle time.

Results You Can Expect

When visibility improves, the benefits are tangible:

• Faster, more accurate reporting cycles

• Better cost control and project forecasting

• Fewer delays in identifying commercial risks

• Improved margin recovery through faster variation handling

• More time for strategic analysis, less time spent compiling data

The return on investment isn’t just financial—it’s organisational alignment, reduced stress, and increased agility.

Key Questions to Assess Your Visibility

Finance leaders should regularly assess their current visibility gaps. Start with these questions:

• Can we see cost-to-complete in real time for our active projects?

• How many hours per month do we spend on manual data gathering?

• Where are teams relying on spreadsheets or emails to track spend?

• What reports should ops self-serve without involving finance?

• Are we forecasting future cash and margin with confidence?

If these answers are unclear, you’ve found your roadmap.

Conclusion: Clarity Builds Profitability

Visibility isn’t just a reporting improvement—it’s a strategic shift. It enables faster, more accurate decisions. It empowers finance to lead, not follow. And most importantly, it builds resilience into your margin.

As finance leader, your next competitive edge isn’t a new hire or a better spreadsheet—it’s clarity.

Now’s the time to deliver it.