Staffing & business process outsourcing

$2.4M a year of earned margin never reaches an invoice.

We connected contracts, timesheets, payroll and billing, reconciled them line by line, and traced where approved work and contracted rates fall out between systems. Here is what 30 days of read-only access found.

Annual margin leakage

$2.4M

3.9% of revenue

Contracts affected

11 of 38

6 explain 80% of the gap

Approved hours never invoiced

4,180

last 90 days

Margin floor breach

—

portfolio gross margin < 18% on current trend

The three questions we agreed to answer

Which contracts lose margin, and why?Discover
How much billable work never gets billed?Quantify
Which contracts will fall below the margin floor?Predict

1 · Connect

Six systems, one reconciled view of each contract

Read-only access. Before any insight, the totals are reconciled with finance and operations, and gaps in the data are shown, not hidden.

CRMaccounts, renewals

Contractsrate cards, OT & escalator clauses

Recruitmentplacements, roles

Timesheetsapproved hours by worker

Payrollpay rates, overtime

Billinginvoice lines, credits

Timesheet hours ↔ payroll hoursmatched by worker, week and contract

99.1%

Payroll hours ↔ invoiced hours5.4% of paid hours have no invoice line

94.6%

Contracts parsed for rates & clauses3 contracts have ambiguous overtime terms, flagged for review

35 / 38

Worker role ↔ rate-card rolemapping confirmed with operations for 31 contracts

31 / 38

2 · Discover

Reported margin hides who is actually unprofitable

Reported margin uses contracted bill rates. True margin uses what was actually invoiced against what was actually paid. Four contracts that look healthy in the monthly report sit below the 18% floor.

Gross margin by contract: reported vs true

10 largest contracts by revenue, last 12 months

Reported marginTrue marginTrue margin below floor

Overtime share of hours, by contract and week

Fixed-rate contracts highlighted in the forecast · last 12 weeks

3 · Quantify

Where the $2.4M goes

Every finding is labelled by how sure we are. Verified findings are reconciled line by line; anything else is a hypothesis with the evidence still needed to confirm it.

Margin lost between contract and invoice, by cause

Annualised, all 38 contracts · contracted margin $14.3M, realised $11.9M

4 · Predict

On the current trend, margin breaks the floor before year end

Overtime on three fixed-rate contracts is rising week on week. The forecast is back-tested against the last 12 months, and the range shows the uncertainty honestly.

Portfolio gross margin, weekly

16 weeks actual · 13-week forecast with 80% range

ActualCurrent trend80% rangeWith fixes applied18% margin floor

5 · Act

Five actions, ranked by value and confidence

Each action names an owner and the evidence behind it. Outcomes are tracked, so the next review shows what was recovered.

Action	Value / yr	Confidence
Invoice 4,180 approved-but-unbilled hours and fix the timesheet-to-billing syncOwner: Finance · also recovers ~$215K one-time	$860K	Verified
Bill overtime at contracted OT rates on 6 contracts currently billed at straight timeOwner: Account management	$640K	Verified
Apply overdue annual rate escalators on 4 contracts at next invoiceOwner: Account management	$410K	Verified
Correct worker-to-role mapping on 2 contracts billed below rate cardOwner: Operations · confirm with client leads	$310K	Likely
Confirm whether travel and equipment expenses are billable on 5 contractsOwner: Legal / contracts	$180K	Hypothesis