Job Profitability Analyzer
Revenue is vanity, margin per job is survival. Service businesses (agencies, contractors, consultancies, trades) routinely lose money on their "best" clients because nobody allocates the hours. Input: invoices/revenue by job or client, time tracking exports, materials/sub costs, payroll rates, and a rough overhead number. Output: profit per job, per client, per service line -- with receipts.
Workflow
- Build the job ledger. Match every revenue line to a job/client. Match every cost: labor (hours x loaded rate -- wages plus taxes/benefits, ~1.25-1.4x base, confirmed with the user), materials and subcontractors from bills, and direct expenses (travel, software attributed to one client).
- Allocate overhead. Rent, admin, insurance, tools spread across jobs -- by labor hours by default (state the method). Show margins both before and after overhead so the user sees direct profitability and true profitability separately.
- Rank.
profitability-report.md: every job and client ranked by margin dollars and margin percent, with the effective hourly rate each client actually pays (revenue minus non-labor costs, divided by hours). This one column reorders most people's client list.
- Diagnose the losers. For bottom-quartile jobs: was it underpricing, scope creep (hours ballooned past estimate), expensive labor mix, or unbilled work? Cite the timesheet and invoice evidence per diagnosis.
- Prescribe. Per problem client: the raise-price number that hits target margin, the scope boundary to enforce, or the fire-the-client math (hours freed x effective rate of the best clients). Pair with
pricing-strategy for the repricing conversation.
Rules
- Loaded labor rates or nothing -- wages alone understate labor cost 25-40% and flatter every margin.
- Unbilled hours are the finding, not noise: track estimated vs. actual vs. billed hours per job explicitly.
- State the overhead allocation method and run the sensitivity: if the ranking flips under a different method, say so.
- No cost data for a job means
INCOMPLETE, not a guess -- and chronic time-tracking gaps get called out as the root problem.
- Small samples get honesty: one bad job does not condemn a client; three do. Note the n per client.
- Effective hourly rate is the universal translator -- report it everywhere.
Quick Commands
- "Analyze [files]" -- full workflow
- "Rank my clients" -- client-level table only
- "Why did [job] lose money?" -- single-job autopsy
- "What should I charge [client]?" -- the repricing math
1---2name: job-profitability-analyzer3description: Find out which clients and jobs actually make money -- allocate real costs (labor hours, materials, subs, overhead) against what each job billed, and rank every client by true margin. Most service businesses discover their biggest client is their least profitable.4---56# Job Profitability Analyzer78Revenue is vanity, margin per job is survival. Service businesses (agencies, contractors, consultancies, trades) routinely lose money on their "best" clients because nobody allocates the hours. Input: invoices/revenue by job or client, time tracking exports, materials/sub costs, payroll rates, and a rough overhead number. Output: profit per job, per client, per service line -- with receipts.910## Workflow11121. **Build the job ledger.** Match every revenue line to a job/client. Match every cost: labor (hours x loaded rate -- wages plus taxes/benefits, ~1.25-1.4x base, confirmed with the user), materials and subcontractors from bills, and direct expenses (travel, software attributed to one client).132. **Allocate overhead.** Rent, admin, insurance, tools spread across jobs -- by labor hours by default (state the method). Show margins both before and after overhead so the user sees direct profitability and true profitability separately.143. **Rank.** `profitability-report.md`: every job and client ranked by margin dollars and margin percent, with the effective hourly rate each client actually pays (revenue minus non-labor costs, divided by hours). This one column reorders most people's client list.154. **Diagnose the losers.** For bottom-quartile jobs: was it underpricing, scope creep (hours ballooned past estimate), expensive labor mix, or unbilled work? Cite the timesheet and invoice evidence per diagnosis.165. **Prescribe.** Per problem client: the raise-price number that hits target margin, the scope boundary to enforce, or the fire-the-client math (hours freed x effective rate of the best clients). Pair with `pricing-strategy` for the repricing conversation.1718## Rules1920- Loaded labor rates or nothing -- wages alone understate labor cost 25-40% and flatter every margin.21- Unbilled hours are the finding, not noise: track estimated vs. actual vs. billed hours per job explicitly.22- State the overhead allocation method and run the sensitivity: if the ranking flips under a different method, say so.23- No cost data for a job means `INCOMPLETE`, not a guess -- and chronic time-tracking gaps get called out as the root problem.24- Small samples get honesty: one bad job does not condemn a client; three do. Note the n per client.25- Effective hourly rate is the universal translator -- report it everywhere.2627## Quick Commands2829- "Analyze [files]" -- full workflow30- "Rank my clients" -- client-level table only31- "Why did [job] lose money?" -- single-job autopsy32- "What should I charge [client]?" -- the repricing math
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