Margin and capacity

The Agreement Margin Desk shows contract value against delivered and billed amounts for each managed service agreement. It also brings realization, projected margin and hours burn into the same review, with a way to open the agreement record. A service delivery manager can use that view before accepting more work on a contract. Finance Manager can compare the delivered cost and gross margin with the amount already invoiced.

The underlying agreement holds budget hours, delivered hours, logged hours, hours remaining and contract consumed. These measures come from connected service, time, expense and milestone records. A manager should look at both the percentage signal and the underlying entries. A high hours burn can come from a large delivery task, a budget that was set too low or a service line attached to the wrong agreement.

• Agreement economics. Contract value, delivery, invoicing, cost and margin sit on the agreement.
• Engineer activity. Billable and total logged hours sit on the engineer record alongside weekly capacity.
• Exception follow-up. Managers open the agreement or engineer record behind a signal before changing work plans.

Set rates and weekly capacity for engineers before interpreting utilization. Bill rate and cost rate live on the engineer record; service entries also carry their own rate and calculated cost values. Decide how the team will use those values when an engineer’s rate changes during a contract. The reported utilization percentage is most useful when engineers log time consistently, including nonbillable work.

For agreements, agree on the expected contract value and budget hours. Check the relationship between a retainer’s term and its value before comparing one retainer with another. The margin desk can flag a conversation, but the manager still needs to inspect scope, entries and invoices to decide whether the agreement needs a commercial change.

A service delivery manager reviews a client retainer at midterm. Delivered hours are approaching the budget, while invoiced service amount is behind delivered amount. Open the agreement from the margin desk and inspect its service entries and milestones. Confirm that each line belongs to the correct agreement and that an approved milestone has reached invoicing. Then compare delivered cost and gross margin with contract value before discussing scope with the account owner.

Next, inspect the engineers working that agreement. One engineer has high total logged hours but a lower billable share. Open their time entries and check whether the nonbillable work was internal or attached to the client. Use weekly capacity and actual logged hours to plan the next period. This is a staffing decision based on the record, not a reason to rewrite time entries to improve the percentage.

• Agreement Status Board — Agreements grouped by current status for a quick delivery review.
• My Agreements — A manager’s agreements with end date and remaining hours.
• Completed Agreements — Closed commitments with delivered amount and margin visible.

Use margin review after service approval and milestone billing.