| 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
- Ask for the analysis period and list of active clients (or detect from transaction data).
- Use
transaction_search to find all incoming payments, grouped by client name or reference.
- Use
transaction_search to find all expenses directly tied to each client (contractor costs, materials, software licenses specific to a project).
- Use
spending_summary to get total overhead (rent, utilities, general subscriptions).
- Allocate overhead proportionally by revenue share: Client Overhead = Total Overhead * (Client Revenue / Total Revenue).
- 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%
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
- Rank clients by profit margin, not just revenue.
- Flag clients with margins below 20% as candidates for price renegotiation or scope reduction.
Without Wilson
- Export bank transactions as CSV for the analysis period.
- In a spreadsheet, add a "Client" column. Tag each income and expense row with the client it relates to. Tag overhead expenses as "General."
- Create a pivot table: Rows = Client, Values = Sum of Income, Sum of Direct Expenses.
- For overhead allocation, calculate each client's revenue share:
=ClientRevenue/TotalRevenue.
- Client Overhead =
=RevenueShare * TotalOverhead.
- Client Profit =
=ClientRevenue - DirectCosts - AllocatedOverhead.
- Client Margin =
=ClientProfit/ClientRevenue*100.
- 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.