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What the full measure needs
A complete picture of profitability has four ingredients. The fee earned on the project, the direct labor cost of the hours spent on it, a fair share of the firm's overhead, and the result: margin. Two ratios come up often. The effective rate is the fee earned divided by the hours worked. A multiplier relates revenue to direct labor cost.
All of these need numbers that do not live in a timesheet: what each person costs the firm per hour, and how overhead is spread across projects. That is why they sit in accounting-first systems. If those inputs are guessed, the output is worse than no number, because people act on it. Why project numbers drift explains how the drift happens.
What can be tracked without cost data
Start narrower. Three figures per project, kept honestly, are worth more than a dashboard nobody trusts:
- Invoiced against quoted. Scope growth shows up here first.
- Collected against invoiced. This is cash, a different problem from revenue.
- Billable against non-billable hours. This is where quiet losses live.
None of these is margin. They describe revenue and effort, and they answer which projects to stop taking more often than people expect.
Where software helps, and where it stops
Some platforms describe project accounting or profitability reporting inside the product. Others record the commercial side only. The BQE CORE alternatives article lists what each option states and what a lighter tool gives up, and says to ask for the exact report by name in a demo.
Rizqo's revenue and effort report shows invoiced, collected, billable and non-billable hours and billable amount for every project, exportable to CSV, Excel or PDF. It does not hold staff cost data, so it does not calculate margin, profit or an effective rate against cost. The about page lists every limit.