Reports Module

KPI Reporting for Consulting Firms

Utilization, project margin, revenue per employee and pipeline, read from the same dataset that runs your projects rather than exported into a BI tool that drifts out of date. No warehouse to maintain, and no reconciliation meeting to work out which number is right.

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The KPIs a professional services firm actually runs on

Most firms track more numbers than they use. These are the ones that change a decision, and what each of them is really telling you.

KPIWhat it isWhat it warns you about
Billable utilizationBillable hours over real available hours, after part-time capacity, holiday and absenceFalling utilization raises the true cost of every billable hour, so margins erode before revenue does
Project marginRevenue less real cost, per project, liveA project can be on schedule and on budget in hours while still losing money on rate
Forecast at CompletionExpected total cost: consumed to date plus remaining allocated workWhere the project lands, while there is still time to change it
Revenue per employeeAnnual revenue over total headcount, billable and non-billableWhether the firm's structure scales, or whether cost is growing faster than capability
Weighted pipelineOpen deals weighted by the stage each has reached, not the raw open totalA quarter built on the unweighted pipeline, which is always the most optimistic number available
Realisation rateInvoiced value over value of hours loggedWork being written off quietly at the invoice stage

A fuller treatment of each, with how to set targets, is in the KPIs consulting firms should actually track, alongside utilization rate benchmarks.

Four report areas, one dataset

Everything reads from the same source that the timesheets, projects and pipeline write to.

Sales reports

Pipeline value and stage movement, conversion rates, and the weighted revenue forecast, reported alongside project and resource views rather than in a separate sales tool.

Projects reports

Margin, budget consumed against progress, and Forecast at Completion across the portfolio rather than one project at a time.

Resources reports

Allocation and availability across the firm, so idle capacity and sustained overcommitment are both visible instead of only the one that is currently painful.

Employees reports

Utilization per person and team against real availability, plus cost per hour, so the reporting and the project economics use the same figures.

Keep an Eye Out For

A standing exception view of what has moved and is worth a second look. Most reporting failures are not missing data, they are a number nobody noticed.

Firm-level KPIs

Revenue per employee, billable ratio and overhead per billable hour, computed from yearly turnover and operating expenses held in settings.

Why reporting on one dataset matters more than the charts

The common architecture in professional services is a time tracker, a project tool, a finance system and a BI layer stitched over the top. It produces attractive dashboards and a recurring argument about which number is correct, because each system holds its own version of utilization, of a billable hour and of what a project cost.

Here there is one version. The utilization figure in the employee report is the same figure that determines each person's cost per billable hour, which is the same figure behind every project margin and every Forecast at Completion. When it moves, everything downstream moves consistently.

That has a cost as well as a benefit, and it is worth being straight about it: this is reporting on your operational data, not a general-purpose analytics platform. If you need to blend it with marketing spend and financial consolidation across entities, you will still want a BI tool. What you will not need is a BI tool to answer whether a project is profitable.

Where the numbers come from

Timesheets

Billable and non-billable hours, the raw material for utilization and realisation.

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Project Cost Tracking

Margin and Forecast at Completion per project, rolled up to the portfolio.

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CRM and Pipeline

Weighted forecast, so sales reporting sits next to delivery reporting.

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Consulting KPI reporting: common questions

Utilization, revenue per employee, and reporting without a separate BI tool.

What are the most important KPIs for a project manager in a consulting firm?
Four carry most of the weight. Forecast at Completion, because it says where the project lands rather than where it has been. Margin against the budgeted margin, because a project can be on schedule and still be losing money. Budget consumed against progress delivered, which is the pair that exposes trouble earliest. And the utilization of the people assigned, because a project delivered by an under-utilized team costs more per hour than the plan assumed. Everything else is usually a variation on these.
What is revenue per employee and what is a good figure?
Revenue per employee is annual revenue divided by total headcount, including everyone who does not bill. It is the cleanest single measure of whether a services firm's structure is working, because it captures utilization, pricing and overhead ratio in one number without any of them being able to hide. The right target varies widely by market, service line and seniority mix, so the useful comparison is against your own trend rather than a published benchmark. If it is falling while headcount grows, the firm is adding cost faster than capability.
What is the employee to revenue ratio?
The same relationship expressed the other way round, and the two names are used more or less interchangeably. The reason to watch it is that it makes the effect of non-billable headcount visible. Adding an operations hire is often the right decision, but it moves this number, and a firm that only tracks billable utilization will not see the cost of that decision anywhere in its reporting.
How is utilization reported?
Per person, per team and across the firm, calculated as billable hours over real available hours after part-time capacity, vacation entitlement and absence. Because availability is derived rather than assumed, the utilization figure is comparable between a full-time consultant and a part-time one, which a headline percentage against a standard week is not.
Do reports need a separate BI tool or data export?
No. Sales, projects, resources and employee reporting all read the same dataset that the timesheets, projects and CRM write to, so there is nothing to export and no warehouse to keep in sync. The practical consequence is that the utilization figure in the reports and the utilization figure driving your project cost rates cannot disagree, which they routinely do when reporting lives in a separate tool.
What is the Keep an Eye Out For report?
A standing exception view: the projects, people and deals that have moved in a direction worth a second look. It exists because most reporting failures are not a lack of data but a lack of anyone noticing the number that changed. Reporting is on the Pro plan, which is the only plan, at EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly.

One set of numbers everyone agrees on

EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, every module included, free onboarding and data transfer. 14-day trial, no credit card required.

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