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Analyze profitability by dimension — product line, customer segment, channel, geography, cohort — identifying profit drivers and margin improvement opportunities for strategic decision-making.
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Based on SOC occupation classification
Reconciles bank accounts and credit cards monthly — matches every transaction to the ledger, resolves exceptions, tracks uncleared items, and documents the process. Use when the user mentions bank reconciliation, transaction matching, reconciling accounts, GL cash balance not matching the bank, or asks about month-end reconciliation or corporate card reconciliation.
Manages banking relationships — account optimization, fee negotiation, credit facility oversight, treasury yield, and fraud prevention. Use when the user mentions banking setup, bank fees, credit facility, treasury yield, investing excess cash, opening new accounts, or asks about banking architecture, account optimization, or fraud prevention.
Builds and maintains a 13-week rolling cash forecast — models inflows, outflows, scenario analysis, and forecast-vs-actual accuracy tracking. Use when the user mentions cash forecast, 13-week forecast, liquidity projection, cash runway, or asks about modeling cash under different scenarios or when cash runs out.
Monitors daily cash position across all accounts, flags anomalies, tracks burn rate, and produces a daily cash snapshot. Use when the user mentions cash position, daily cash check, burn rate, bank balance, or asks about unusual transactions or cash alerts.
Optimizes working capital — improves DPO, accelerates collections, manages inventory, and negotiates payment terms to maximize cash efficiency. Use when the user mentions working capital, cash conversion cycle, DPO, DSO, or asks about improving payment terms, accelerating collections, or optimizing cash tied up in operations.
Routes CFO and financial operations requests to specialized sub-skills based on user intent matching, task classification, and multi-skill chain assembly. Use when the user mentions startup CFO tasks, financial operations, reporting, fundraising questions, cash management, financial planning, strategic advisory, or asks about running any CFO-related workflow.
| name | profitability-analysis |
| description | Analyze profitability by dimension — product line, customer segment, channel, geography, cohort — identifying profit drivers and margin improvement opportunities for strategic decision-making. |
| version | 2.0.0 |
| author | Crewm8 |
| maintainer | Gokul (github.com/gokulb20) |
| license | MIT |
| homepage | https://crewm8.ai |
| tags | ["cfo","finance","profitability","margin-analysis","segmentation","product-pnl"] |
| related_skills | ["unit-economics-analysis","pricing-strategy-advisory","cost-optimization","revenue-forecasting","business-case-modeling"] |
| inputs_required | ["revenue-data-by-customer-product-channel-geography","cost-data-with-allocation-keys","customer-data-with-segment-labels","headcount-data-by-team-and-function"] |
| deliverables | ["profitability-heatmap","segment-product-channel-pnl","profit-concentration-analysis","kill-fix-invest-framework","improvement-recommendations"] |
| compatible_agents | ["hermes","claude-code","droid","cursor","windsurf","openclaw","openai","generic"] |
Analyze profitability across every dimension of the business — by product, customer segment, channel, geography, and cohort. Identify what's making money, what's losing money, and where to focus. Goal: the company invests in its profit engines and fixes or kills its loss-makers.
Most startups look at blended gross margin and assume everything is fine. Segment-level profitability analysis almost always reveals ugly truths: a product that's losing money, a customer segment that destroys value, a geography that drains cash. Without this analysis, companies unknowingly invest in their loss-makers and underinvest in their profit engines. This skill provides the multi-dimensional view needed to allocate capital, set strategy, and improve margins where it matters.
| Profitability Level | What It Includes | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| Gross Profit | Revenue − Direct COGS | Product-level margin health |
| Contribution Margin | Gross Profit − Direct S&M (segment-level) | Channel and segment efficiency |
| Fully Loaded | Contribution − Shared R&D & G&A allocation | True economic profit |
| 80/20 Rule of Profit | Typical Finding |
|---|---|
| 20% of customers generate | 80%+ of profit |
| The bottom 20% of customers | Often destroy value (unprofitable) |
| 1-2 products/channels | Often account for majority of total profit |
Based on the business question, select which dimensions to analyze.
| ($ in 000s, annualized) | Enterprise | Mid-Market | SMB | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2,400 | $1,800 | $600 | $4,800 |
| Direct COGS (hosting, support allocation by tickets) | ($288) | ($270) | ($150) | ($708) |
| Gross Profit | $2,112 (88%) | $1,530 (85%) | $450 (75%) | $4,092 (85%) |
| Sales & Marketing allocation (by team/segment) | ($720) | ($540) | ($240) | ($1,500) |
| Contribution Margin | $1,392 (58%) | $990 (55%) | $210 (35%) | $2,592 (54%) |
| Shared R&D allocation | ($480) | ($360) | ($120) | ($960) |
| Shared G&A allocation | ($360) | ($270) | ($90) | ($720) |
| Segment Profit (fully loaded) | $552 (23%) | $360 (20%) | $0 (0%) | $912 (19%) |
| Product | ARR | Gross Margin | Team Cost | Contribution | % of Total Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Platform | $3,200 | 85% | ($960) | $1,760 | 68% |
| Analytics Add-on | $1,000 | 80% | ($400) | $400 | 16% |
| API / Developer | $400 | 70% | ($200) | $80 | 3% |
| Professional Services | $200 | 40% | ($160) | ($80) | −3% |
| Professional Services is losing money — fix or kill. |
| Channel | ARR Acquired (12mo) | CAC (total) | 12-Month GP | Net (GP - CAC) | Payback (mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound / Organic | $600,000 | $60,000 | $480,000 | $420,000 | 1.5 |
| Outbound Sales | $800,000 | $400,000 | $640,000 | $240,000 | 7.5 |
| Paid Search | $200,000 | $150,000 | $160,000 | $10,000 | 11.3 |
| Events | $100,000 | $80,000 | $80,000 | $0 | 12.0 |
| Partners | $150,000 | $30,000 | $120,000 | $90,000 | 3.0 |
| Events and paid search are marginal. Outbound is good but expensive. |
| Region | Revenue | Headcount | Other Costs | Profit | Margin % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North America | $3,500 | ($1,200) | ($700) | $1,600 | 46% |
| Europe | $800 | ($400) | ($200) | $200 | 25% |
| APAC | $300 | ($250) | ($150) | ($100) | −33% |
| APAC is losing money — under-scale. Either invest to grow or pare back. |
Track profit by the customer's vintage:
| Cohort (by quarter acquired) | Q Acquired ARR | Current ARR | NRR | Cumulative GP | Total CAC | Net Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | $50,000 | $80,000 | 160% | $320,000 | ($75,000) | $245,000 |
| Q2 2025 | $80,000 | $110,000 | 138% | $280,000 | ($120,000) | $160,000 |
| Q3 2025 | $120,000 | $140,000 | 117% | $200,000 | ($180,000) | $20,000 |
| Q4 2025 | $150,000 | $145,000 | 97% | $80,000 | ($225,000) | ($145,000) |
| Q4 2025 cohort is shrinking! Diagnose churn immediately. |
Analyze which customers, products, or channels generate the majority of profit and which are destroying value.
For each underperforming area:
The skill is complete when:
Can you answer "Which customer segment generates the most profit per dollar of revenue?" and "Which product line is losing money and why?" and "If we had to cut 20% of costs, where would we cut without hurting our most profitable segments?" If not, the profitability analysis is incomplete.
User: "Which customer segments are most and least profitable?" Expected behavior: You pull revenue, COGS, and OpEx data by segment (enterprise, mid-market, SMB), allocate costs using reasonable drivers (headcount for S&M, ticket volume for support, usage for hosting), calculate gross profit, contribution margin, and fully loaded profit for each segment, present a comparison table, and recommend: enterprise is the profit engine (invest more), SMB is break-even (fix with price increase or efficiency), and mid-market needs monitoring.
User: "Our professional services product line is losing money. Should we kill it?" Expected behavior: You build a product P&L for professional services showing revenue ($200k ARR), gross margin (40%), and fully loaded costs (team cost of $160k, shared costs of $80k, total loss of $40k). You analyze whether it drives core product adoption (customer success data: PS customers have 20% lower churn on core product). You recommend: don't kill — it's a strategic loss leader. Instead, raise PS rates by 25% and reduce delivery cost by standardizing engagements, targeting breakeven within 6 months.
unit-economics-analysispricing-strategy-advisorycost-optimizationrevenue-forecastingbusiness-case-modeling