You are somewhat correct; pre-boil SG will be different than post-boil SG, but it will tell you what your post-boil will be. Remember, SG is a measurement of the amount of sugar in the water; if you boil the water, you are proportionally going to concentrate the sugars in the remaining.
Here is how you do the calcualtion:
take your hydrometer reading. Let is assume it is 1.060 and you have 6 gallons, and you expect to get down to 5 gallons after the boil.
For calculations, the SG of 1.060 will be using the value of 60. 1.036 would be 36, etc. Get the pattern?
The equations is as follows:
[Preboil SG] * [Preboil volume] / [Postboil volume] = [Postboil SG]
So, in the example above we would have 60*6/5 = 72, giving a post-boil SG of 1.072.
So, if you are aiming for a specific SG after the boil you can back-calculate what your pre-boil SG should be. Not so tough now, is it?