May 1, 2026
WIP (Work In Progress) management in restoration refers to the ongoing tracking of every active job’s financial status — estimated vs. actual costs, billing progress, and margin trajectory — on a weekly basis. Without active WIP management, jobs routinely finish 15–25% below their estimated margin with no warning until the job cost report is closed.
Most restoration companies review job performance after the job closes. That’s not a review — it’s a post-mortem. By the time a job cost report reveals a 20% margin miss, there’s nothing to recover. The work is done, the equipment is back, and the client has moved on. The only question left is how much that job cost you.
Weekly WIP management flips this. Instead of waiting for closeout to learn what happened, you’re monitoring margin trajectory in real time — while there’s still time to intervene. That means catching scope gaps before the field crew leaves, identifying billing that’s falling behind, and flagging jobs that are trending into loss before they arrive there.
A WIP review doesn’t require a complex system. It requires five data points on every active job, reviewed every week without exception:
1. Estimated vs. Actual Cost to Date. What did you estimate this job would cost, and what have you actually spent so far? If actual costs are running ahead of the percentage-complete pace, you have a problem. A job that’s 60% complete by cost but only 40% complete by scope is bleeding margin.
2. Percent Complete. How far along is the job physically? This number has to come from the field, not from billing. Billing lags reality. You need an honest assessment from the PM or lead tech: what percentage of the work is done?
3. Billing Status. How much have you invoiced versus how much work has been completed? A job that’s 70% done but only 40% billed is a cash flow problem in formation. Get billing current before the job closes — never carry unbilled completion into the next week if you can avoid it.
4. Open Supplements. What scope items have been identified that weren’t in the original estimate? Open supplements represent potential revenue that exists right now but isn’t guaranteed until it’s submitted and approved. Track every open supplement by dollar amount and status. Unsubmitted supplements are the single most common cause of margin compression at closeout.
5. Days on Site. How long has this job been active, and what’s the original estimated duration? Jobs that run long almost always cost more than projected — extended equipment rental, extra labor, additional subcontractor visits. A job running 30% over its estimated duration is a red flag that deserves direct attention.
The WIP review meeting has a single purpose: find the jobs that are drifting and decide what to do about them before this week ends. It is not a status update. It is not a check-in. It is a margin protection exercise.
Structure it like this: pull up your WIP dashboard (more on that below), go through every active job in order, and for each one ask: is this job on pace to close at or above its estimated margin? If the answer is yes, move on. If the answer is no — or if you don’t know — stop and work the problem.
Assign a status to every job coming out of the meeting: Green (on track), Yellow (watching), or Red (intervention required). Any Red job gets a specific owner, a specific action, and a specific deadline before the next review. Don’t leave the meeting without those three things documented for every Red job.
Thirty minutes is enough if the data is pre-loaded. If you’re spending the first twenty minutes pulling numbers together, you have a data problem, not a time problem. The fix is building the dashboard so it’s current before anyone walks into the room.
Some jobs give clear signals before they fail. The most reliable warning signs: actual costs are running more than 10% ahead of percentage-complete pace; the job has been on site longer than 120% of the estimated duration; there are open supplements older than 7 days that haven’t been submitted; billing is more than two weeks behind completed work; or the PM has changed the scope verbally without a written change order.
Any one of these is a yellow flag. Two or more on the same job is a red flag. The owner or operations lead needs to be personally involved before the next week’s review.
You don’t need specialized software. The best WIP dashboard is the one your team will actually update. A spreadsheet with the five fields above — maintained by the PM or office manager at the end of each day, reviewed by ownership every Friday morning — is more valuable than a sophisticated system nobody uses.
If you’re using Xactimate, your job cost data is already there — you just need a weekly pull process. If you’re using a field management platform, most have WIP report views. The missing piece is almost always the percent-complete field, which requires a human judgment call from the field. Build the habit of getting that number entered every Friday by noon, before the review meeting.
The dashboard format matters less than the discipline of updating and reviewing it consistently. One missed week creates enough data debt that the review loses its value. Two missed weeks and you’re back to post-mortem management. Weekly is non-negotiable.
At minimum: estimated vs. actual cost to date, percent complete (from field), billing status vs. completion, open supplement dollar amounts and submission status, and days on site vs. estimated duration. These five data points reveal margin trajectory before a job closes.
Compare actual costs incurred to the percentage of work completed. If you’ve spent 60% of your cost budget but only completed 40% of the work, you’re trending toward a loss. Also watch for jobs running more than 20% longer than estimated duration and open supplements older than one week.
A 30-minute meeting where every active job is reviewed against the five WIP metrics. Each job gets a Green/Yellow/Red status. Every Red job gets an assigned owner, a specific corrective action, and a deadline before the next review. The meeting ends with no unresolved Red jobs.
For residential water damage jobs, 8–12 active jobs is a reasonable load for a competent PM with good systems. Above 15 active jobs, documentation quality and supplement discipline typically degrade. The right number depends on job complexity and office support — a PM handling large commercial losses should carry fewer active jobs than one handling residential water mitigation.
Reviewing job performance only after closeout. By then, the margin is already gone. The second biggest mistake is tracking billing rather than completion — a job can be fully billed and still headed for a margin loss if costs haven’t been reconciled. WIP management works only when it tracks costs against physical completion in real time.
Mike McCabe is a restoration business consultant and the founder of Profit Detective. He works with restoration operators to find and fix the margin leaks that don’t show up until it’s too late.
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