client-profitability

name	client-profitability
description	Analyze revenue and costs per client to find your most profitable accounts.

Client Profitability Analysis

Overview

Break down revenue and direct costs by client to determine which accounts are most and least profitable. Reveals hidden costs in high-maintenance clients and identifies your highest-value relationships.

Wilson Tools Used

• transaction_search — find all revenue transactions grouped by client/vendor name, and all expenses attributable to specific clients
• spending_summary — calculate overhead costs to allocate across clients

Workflow

1. Ask for the analysis period and list of active clients (or detect from transaction data).
2. Use transaction_search to find all incoming payments, grouped by client name or reference.
3. Use transaction_search to find all expenses directly tied to each client (contractor costs, materials, software licenses specific to a project).
4. Use spending_summary to get total overhead (rent, utilities, general subscriptions).
5. Allocate overhead proportionally by revenue share: Client Overhead = Total Overhead * (Client Revenue / Total Revenue).
6. Calculate per-client profitability:

CLIENT PROFITABILITY — [Period]
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Client          Revenue   Direct    Overhead   Profit   Margin
                          Costs     Alloc.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Acme Corp       $15,000   $4,500    $3,750    $6,750    45.0%
Beta LLC        $10,000   $7,200    $2,500      $300     3.0%
Gamma Inc        $8,000   $2,000    $2,000    $4,000    50.0%
Delta Co         $7,000   $1,800    $1,750    $3,450    49.3%
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
TOTAL           $40,000  $15,500   $10,000   $14,500    36.3%
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

7. Rank clients by profit margin, not just revenue.
8. Flag clients with margins below 20% as candidates for price renegotiation or scope reduction.

Without Wilson

1. Export bank transactions as CSV for the analysis period.
2. In a spreadsheet, add a "Client" column. Tag each income and expense row with the client it relates to. Tag overhead expenses as "General."
3. Create a pivot table: Rows = Client, Values = Sum of Income, Sum of Direct Expenses.
4. For overhead allocation, calculate each client's revenue share: =ClientRevenue/TotalRevenue.
5. Client Overhead = =RevenueShare * TotalOverhead.
6. Client Profit = =ClientRevenue - DirectCosts - AllocatedOverhead.
7. Client Margin = =ClientProfit/ClientRevenue*100.
8. Sort by margin descending. If you use time tracking (Toggl, Harvest, Clockify), export hours per client and calculate effective hourly rate: =ClientProfit/HoursWorked.

Important Notes

• The hardest part is attributing expenses to specific clients. If you cannot tie an expense to a client, it goes into overhead.
• Time is a hidden cost. A client paying $10,000/month but consuming 80% of your time is less profitable than it appears. Consider tracking hours per client alongside dollars.
• Overhead allocation by revenue share is simple but imperfect. A client generating 50% of revenue but only 20% of support tickets is being over-allocated overhead.
• Use this analysis to decide where to invest sales effort, which clients to fire, and where to raise prices.