Project Profitability Tracker · Working Tool
“We're busy” is not the same as
“we're making money.”
Log each project's quote against what it actually cost, and the dashboard tells you which kind of work quietly loses you money — the delivery-side mirror of the pipeline tracker's “find the leaking stage.”
How this works
What it's for
A pipeline that's full and a team that's busy can still lose money — if the work itself is priced or scoped wrong. This tool finds that out.
The companion Deal & Pipeline Tracker answers a sales question: where are deals dying? This one answers the delivery question that comes next: which projects actually made money, and which quietly didn't? You log what you quoted against what the work really cost, and the dashboard turns a pile of projects into a single uncomfortable, useful picture.
Everything runs in your browser. Your data is saved in this browser on this device only — it is never sent anywhere, and it will not appear in a different browser, on another device, or in a private/incognito window. Use Export CSV in the Your Data section to keep a backup, and Import CSV to restore or move it.
Find the leaking type
“We're not making enough money” is rarely a company-wide truth. It's usually one type of work — a certain kind of fixed-bid build, a particular client, a category you consistently underquote — dragging down everything the profitable work earns. Averages hide it. This tool groups by type so the leak has nowhere to hide.
The mechanism is deliberately simple. For each project you record the revenue (what you're paid), the hours quoted versus the hours actually spent, and your internal cost per hour. From those, margin and effective rate fall out automatically — and the quoted-vs-actual overrun tells you whether a thin margin is a pricing problem or an estimation problem. Then it rolls everything up by project type, so you can see the pattern you couldn't feel one invoice at a time.
Add a project
Log every completed or in-flight project. You can come back and edit actual hours as work progresses — click Edit on any row below.
Your projects
Every project you've logged. Rows that lost money are shaded. Contribution is revenue minus labor cost (actual hours × your loaded cost/hour), before other direct costs and overhead; rate is your effective revenue per actual hour; overrun is how far actual hours ran past the quote.
| Project | Type | Revenue | Cost | Contribution | Margin | Rate | Overrun |
|---|
Dashboard
The headline numbers
Your whole book of work in one line. A healthy blended margin can still hide a loss-making category — which is what the next view is for.
Contribution = revenue − labor cost (actual hours × your loaded cost/hour). Contribution margin = contribution ÷ revenue. This is a labor contribution figure: it does not subtract other direct costs (software, subcontractors, hosting) or company overhead, so true net profit is lower. Use a fully burdened cost/hour to keep it honest.
Profit by project type
Average margin for each type of work you do, sorted worst-first. Bars to the left of the center line are losing money; bars to the right are making it. The type at the top is your leak.
| Project type | Projects | Revenue | Contribution | Contribution margin | Hours overrun |
|---|
How to read it
Numbers only help if they change a decision. Here's what each signal is actually telling you to do.
A whole type is in the red
If a project type shows a negative or thin average margin, the problem is structural, not a one-off. Either you're systematically underpricing that work or systematically underestimating it — and the overrun column tells you which. Options: raise the price for that category, tighten its scope and change-control, sell it as time-and-materials instead of fixed-bid, or stop taking it. What you should not do is keep doing it at the same price and hope the next one goes better.
Healthy margin but huge overrun
A project can still be profitable while badly overrunning the quote — you simply priced with enough cushion to absorb it. That's luck, not a system. Consistent overruns on a type mean your estimates for that work are wrong, which is an estimation problem to fix at quoting time (see the delivery guide's estimation chapter), not a pricing one.
Thin margin, tight overrun
Here the estimates were accurate — you hit your hours — but the margin is still thin. That's a pure pricing problem: the work costs about what you thought, you're just not charging enough for it. Raise the price; the estimate isn't the issue.
For any low-margin type, ask two questions in order. Did we overrun the hours? If yes, it's an estimation problem — fix it at quoting time. If no, it's a pricing problem — fix it at the proposal. Almost every profitability leak is one of these two, and the overrun column tells you which without guesswork.
Back-fill before you trust it
Like the pipeline tracker, this tool is most useful once it has history in it. Before you draw conclusions, log your last ten to twenty completed projects with honest actual hours. The pattern that emerges is usually uncomfortable and extremely actionable — and it's almost never the project you'd have guessed.
Your data
Everything is stored locally in this browser on this device only — it will not appear in a different browser, on another device, or in a private/incognito window. Export a CSV backup regularly; clearing your browser data will erase the tracker, and the CSV is your only backup. Use Import CSV to restore it or move it to another machine.
This is the delivery-side companion to the Deal & Pipeline Tracker. The pipeline tracker finds where you lose deals; this one finds where you lose money on the deals you win. Together they cover both halves of the leak: the work you're not winning, and the work you shouldn't have won at that price.