Most masonry subcontractors already have the numbers. Bricks laid, mason-days worked, scaffold invoices, cut-out and rebuild hours, the retention that has not landed yet – all of it exists somewhere in a spreadsheet or an accounts package. What is usually missing is a single monthly page that says whether each of those numbers beat its target, and by how much. The Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI is that page: 12 masonry KPIs in 8 groups, scored against target for the month and for the year to date, with a traffic light on each.
The build detail that matters most is direction awareness. Four of the twelve KPIs are higher-is-better and eight are lower-is-better, and the report scores each one accordingly – Actual / Target for the first group, Target / Actual for the second. That is why, in the December 2025 sample, Mortar and Material Waste % shows 101.4% achievement when the actual waste of 6.59% came in below the 6.68% target. A scorecard that gets this wrong turns every cost KPI upside down, and a surprising number of KPI packs do exactly that.
Key Features of the Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- 12 KPIs across 8 groups – Productivity, Cost Control, Materials, Quality, Schedule, Estimating, Financial and Safety.
- Direction-aware achievement with a written UTB/LTB flag per KPI, set in the data pack rather than buried in DAX.
- Three-state traffic lights – On Target at 100% or more, At Risk from 95% to 100%, Missed below 95% – printed separately for MTD and YTD.
- Five slicers (Month, KPI Group, Owner, Priority, Direction), synced across pages so a selection carries.
- A 12-month sparkline in each scorecard row, plus five summary cards with their own trend bars and month-on-month deltas.
- An owner and a priority on every KPI – 11 named owners in the sample, at Critical, High or Medium.
- Two years of actuals in the data pack, which is what makes the prior-year lines and YoY arrows real rather than estimated.
- Native visuals only, one custom theme file, and a fully editable
.pbix.
Dashboard Pages Explanation
Page 1 – KPI Scorecard
Five slicers sit across the top, then five summary cards: Total KPIs, MTD Target Met, MTD At Risk, MTD Target Missed and Achievement MTD. Each carries a 12-month trend and a MoM delta. The December 2025 sample reads 12 KPIs, 6 met, 3 at risk, 3 missed, and 98.7% achievement for the month.
Below that is the scorecard table itself, one row per KPI: name, group, unit, sparkline, Actual (MTD), Target (MTD), Achievement % (MTD), Status Light (MTD), YoY Arrow (MTD), Actual (YTD), Achievement % (YTD) and Status Light (YTD). Because both horizons are on the same row, a KPI that is fine this month but behind for the year is obvious. Site Safety Audit Findings is the clearest example in the sample: At Risk for December at 97.6%, but Missed on the year at 86.6%.
Page 2 – KPI Trend
A “Select KPI Name” list runs down the left with all twelve KPIs. Pick one and six context cards name its group, unit, direction, owner and priority, five value cards give Actual MTD, Target MTD, Achievement % MTD, Status MTD and YoY % MTD, and two line charts plot the year: CY MTD vs PY MTD vs Target MTD by Month and CY YTD vs PY YTD vs Target YTD by Month. Three lines on each – this year, last year, target.
Page 3 – KPI Definition
This is the page that stops the monthly argument. The same KPI selector appears here, synced to page 2, and next to it sit two cards most KPI packs skip: the formula and the plain-English definition. Bricks Laid per Mason-Day, for instance, reads “Bricks and Blocks Laid / Mason-Days Worked”, defined as “Standard-brick equivalents laid by one bricklayer in a working day across new build, blockwork and stone”. Underneath is a month-by-month table for all twelve months with a total row, an MTD Actual vs Target by Month chart and an Achievement % by Month chart.
Page 4 and the hidden pages
Page 4 is a short Get More Templates catalogue and customisation page. Behind the visible pages sit two hidden 280×360 tooltip pages, KPI Detail and Trend Detail, which surface on hover.
Worth knowing before you go hunting for it: this build has no drill-through. The KPI Definition page is reached from the page tabs, and its selector is synced to the KPI Trend page, so whichever KPI you had selected is already applied when you arrive.
Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI vs. Tableau or Qlik vs. Paid Construction SaaS – Feature Comparison
| This template (Power BI) | Tableau or Qlik build | Procore / Buildertrend analytics | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $12.99 once | Roughly $70-$115 per creator seat per month, plus build time | Quoted per project volume, typically four figures a year and up |
| Platform | Power BI Desktop, free from Microsoft | Tableau Desktop or Qlik Sense | Vendor cloud, browser only |
| Setup time | Retype 12 KPI rows and refresh – under an hour | Days to weeks for the same scorecard | Weeks, plus onboarding |
| Real-time team collaboration | After publishing to your own workspace | Yes, on a paid server | Yes |
| Mobile access | Free Power BI mobile app once published | Yes | Yes |
| Customisable fields | Every KPI, group, unit, formula, owner and priority is a spreadsheet row | Fully custom, but you write it | Limited to the vendor’s field model |
| Share with link | After publishing | Yes, on a server | Yes |
| Year-1 cost at 5 users | $12.99, plus optional Pro seats if you publish | $4,200-$6,900 | Typically far higher again |
| Direction-aware scoring | Built in – 4 UTB, 8 LTB | You build the logic | Fixed to the vendor’s metric set |
| Masonry KPI set out of the box | Yes – bricks, mortar, scaffold, coursing rework, retention | No – blank canvas | Generic construction metrics |
Who Should Use This Template
It suits a masonry or bricklaying subcontractor running anywhere from a handful to a few dozen trowels, a commercial manager who already reports monthly on brick, block and scaffold cost, an estimator tracking tendered against delivered cost, and any Power BI user who wants a finished scorecard pattern to fork for another trade.
It is the wrong tool if you want live data off a site tablet – this reads a spreadsheet you refresh – or if you need per-job and per-site drill-down. The model is a company-level monthly scorecard by design, and the job is not a dimension in it.
Real-World Use Cases
The monthly commercial meeting. Instead of opening on raw totals, it opens on the scorecard with the month selected: six met, three at risk, three missed. Because every row carries an owner, the three misses are three conversations with three names, not a general grumble about productivity.
Cash conversion. Progress Billing Days (DSO) sits in the Financial group with Finance as its owner. Selecting it on KPI Trend puts the current-year line against last year and against target across all twelve months, and the KPI Definition page’s monthly table drops straight into a board pack.
Estimating discipline. The Tender Estimate Accuracy Index is defined on screen as “100 – Weighted Absolute Variance of Tendered vs Delivered Cost”. Having the formula on the page rather than in someone’s head means the debate is about the value, not about the maths.
Advantages of the Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- No KPI is hard-coded. Add a KPI, delete one or rename one in the three data sheets, press Home > Refresh, and the counts, the scorecard, the selector list and every chart follow.
- The scoring rule is written down in the data pack’s Read Me, including the trap that a rate or index YTD must be an average of the months so far and never a sum. A compliance percentage that reaches 1,900% by December is the single most common defect in a hand-built KPI pack.
- Two horizons, one row. MTD and YTD lights side by side stop a good month from covering a bad year.
- Native visuals only, so nothing breaks when a marketplace visual is deprecated, and one theme file recolours the whole report.
- One payment. No subscription, no per-seat fee, lifetime access to the file.
Opportunities for Improvement
Being straight about the limits is more useful than a feature list:
- No drill-through. Navigation between the KPI pages is by page tab plus a synced slicer, not a right-click menu.
- No job or site dimension. This scores the business monthly; it will not tell you which contract dragged the margin down.
- Manual refresh. There is no gateway or scheduled refresh set up out of the box – you edit the workbook and press Refresh, or wire it to your own source.
- The sample numbers are sample numbers. Every target and actual shipped in the file is illustrative. There is no benchmark data and no industry average behind any of them.
- It is not a safety system. Site Safety Audit Findings is a count you type in. The report does not calculate an incident rate, does not do OSHA 300 or 300A recordkeeping, does not check silica, scaffold or CDM compliance, and is not a substitute for a safety management system.
- It is not accounting or estimating software, and it does not connect to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, Procore or Buildertrend.
Best Practices
- Set the Type column first. UTB or LTB per KPI is what makes achievement mean anything. Get it wrong on a cost KPI and every light inverts.
- Load the prior year before you look at any arrow. Input_ Actual expects the reporting year and the year before it; without that, the YoY column is empty by definition.
- Keep rate KPIs out of running totals. Sum money, volume and counts for YTD; average percentages, days, ratios and indices.
- Put a real name in the Owner column. The owner card is what turns the review from a slideshow into a set of actions.
- Keep the three files together. If you move the folder, repoint the source under Home > Transform data > Data source settings > Change Source. Microsoft’s own Power BI data source documentation covers the options if you later swap the workbook for a database.
- Review the definitions once a quarter. The formula card only helps if it still matches how you actually calculate the number.
Explore Relevant Templates
- Electrical Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- HVAC Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- Roofing Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI
- Masonry Contractor KPI Scorecard in Excel – the lighter scorecard family for the same trade
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a paid Power BI licence?
No. Power BI Desktop is free from Microsoft and will open, edit and refresh the file. A Pro or Premium seat is only needed if you want to publish the report and share it with colleagues.
Can I change the KPIs to my own?
Yes. The KPI Name is the join key across the three data sheets. Rename it in all three, or add and delete rows, then refresh. Nothing in the report is hard-coded to a KPI name.
Is there a drill-through page?
No. This build has no drill-through definitions. The KPI Definition page is reached from the page tabs and its selector is synced to the KPI Trend page, so your KPI selection carries across.
Does it track OSHA recordables?
No. The Safety group holds one KPI, Site Safety Audit Findings, and it is a count of open findings that you type in. The dashboard performs no incident-rate calculation and no regulatory recordkeeping.
Are the targets industry benchmarks?
No. Every figure shipped in the file is sample data. Replace the targets with your own before treating any traffic light as meaningful.
How is this different from the Masonry Contractor KPI Scorecard?
The Scorecard is a lighter, single-file product with its own KPI list, sold for Excel and Google Sheets. This is the Power BI KPI Dashboard line: a month picker, a full target-versus-actual scorecard, a KPI Trend page and a KPI Definition page with formulas. The names are close on purpose – they are the same trade at different depths, not duplicates.
What is in the download?
One ZIP holding the .pbix report, the Data.xlsx pack and a Power BI Dashboard user manual PDF. Keep the three together in one folder.
About the Author
Built by PK – Microsoft Certified Professional with 15+ years of Excel, Google Sheets, and Power BI experience. Founder of NextGenTemplates, reaching 300K+ subscribers across YouTube channels. Every template is hand-built and tested before release.
Conclusion
A masonry KPI pack is only worth building if it answers one question every month: which numbers beat target, and who owns the ones that did not. The Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI answers it for twelve KPIs at once, on two horizons, with the direction of each metric handled correctly and the formula written on screen so nobody has to guess.
Get the Masonry Contractor KPI Dashboard in Power BI for $12.99 (regular $19.99) – one payment, fully editable .pbix, lifetime access to the file.
For step-by-step Power BI and Excel tutorials, subscribe to youtube.com/@PKAnExcelExpert.
