The Project Profit Margin Analysis report is for fixed-price work. It compares the fixed amount a customer agreed to pay with what the same hours would be worth at your hourly rates, and shows your profit margin both ways. Use it to judge whether a fixed-price deal paid off, and to price the next one.
Before you run it
The report works only for projects set up in one of these two ways, in the project's settings under Billing & Budget:
- Budget Type of Person Hours with a Billing Method of Person Hourly Rate, or
- Budget Type of Category Hours with a Billing Method of Category Hourly Rate.
For any other project, the report shows a message listing these two setups. See project settings and managing fixed-price projects.
Open the report
Go to Reports in the left menu. On the Standard tab, Project Profit Margin Analysis is in the Project Management group. You can also type "margin" into Search to find it. Click it to open it.
In the panel on the right, choose a Customer and a Project, enter the Customer Budget, then click Preview. The report runs for one project at a time.
Choose what to include
- Customer and Project: the project to analyse. Project Archive Status sets whether the lists show active or archived projects, or both.
- Customer Budget: the fixed amount you agreed to invoice the customer for this project. The report uses it as the fixed invoice amount.
- Timesheet Approval Status: which time entries to count. By default, approved and automatically approved time. Add Draft, Pending or Rejected to include time that isn't approved yet.
Read the report
The top of the report shows the Project Name, Budget Method, Billing Method and Customer Budget Amount.
Two tables list each person or timesheet category with its hours, rates and amounts. Budget uses the budget hours from the project's settings, and Actual uses the hours logged. Both use the current rates in the project's settings, not the rates saved on each time entry: each member's Billable Rate and Cost Rate on the Members tab for Person Hours, or each category's rates on the Categories tab for Category Hours. If a rate is blank, its amounts show as zero.
The Fixed Price vs Time Billable table then compares both ways of charging, in a Budget column and an Actual column:
Row | What it shows |
|---|---|
Total Hours | Budget hours, and hours logged |
Fixed Invoice Amount | The Customer Budget you entered |
Total Cost | The hours at cost rates |
Profit Margin | Fixed invoice amount minus total cost |
Time Based Billable Amount | The billable hours at billable rates |
Profit Margin when Time Billable | Time based billable amount minus total cost |
Recovery Percentage | Fixed invoice amount divided by time based billable amount |
A recovery percentage under 100% means the fixed price earned less than billing by the hour would have. Over 100% means it earned more.
The Profit Margin chart shows the budgeted and actual margin for the fixed price and for time billing side by side.
Save, schedule or export
To keep your parameter choices, save the report as your own copy: see saving and sharing reports. A saved report can be emailed on a schedule: see scheduling reports for email delivery. To download the report as a file, see exporting data.
Who can see it
Administrators, Portfolio Managers and Finance Managers can run the report for any project. Project Managers can run it for projects they're an active member of, and the Customer and Project lists show only those. They see the figures only when they have Can manage Project Member Cost & Billable Rates on that project. Otherwise the report asks them to request access from an administrator.