The numbers that run a services firm are a short list: utilisation (utilization, in the US spelling), revenue per billable person, gross margin by client, pipeline coverage and months of cash. Professional services benchmarks are useful for exactly one thing, which is telling you whether your own figure is unusual; they cannot tell you what your figure should be, because that comes from your cost base, your rate card and your margin target. Every page in this cluster is about one of those five numbers, how to derive your own target for it, and where it misleads when read on its own.
How the pages fit together
The cluster moves from the people measures to the money measures to the forward-looking ones, and the monthly scorecard is where the first four sit on one page, with months of cash beside it in the cash forecast.
Start with the two glossary definitions, because the vocabulary is where most services firms go wrong. Utilisation rate gives the formula, what counts as a billable day, and the trap the whole cluster keeps returning to: utilisation can go up while margin goes down. Revenue per billable person explains why I prefer that measure to revenue per employee, and how to set a target from your own cost base at four levels of the firm.
Then read the playbook on revenue per billable person, the diagnostic. It takes the target from the glossary and asks where the gap is leaking: unbilled days, discounted days, days sold at the wrong grade, or days sold to clients who cost more to serve than they pay. The revenue per billable person model is its companion, and where a founder puts real numbers in.
The one-page KPI scorecard is the reporting layer. It carries client profitability alongside the people measures so the two are read together, and the monthly scorecard template is the same page built out for a board pack. The guide to KPIs for agencies and consultancies is the long form: the measures worth carrying, the ones that belong elsewhere, and the published UK benchmarks, credited to their authors.
The forward-looking pages close the loop. Pipeline coverage ratio and the cash cliff argues that coverage is two questions, will we win it and when will it start, not one reassuring percentage. The cash forecast model and the guide to a cash flow forecast for a services business turn billable days and pipeline into a forecast a bank would recognise.
The order to read it in
| Step | Read | What you leave with |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The two glossary entries | The formulas, and the utilisation trap |
| 2 | The revenue per billable person playbook and model | Your own target, and where the gap is |
| 3 | The scorecard playbook, template and KPI guide | One page for the month, with client profitability on it |
| 4 | The pipeline coverage playbook, the cash model and the forecast guide | Whether next quarter is funded |
The house position
Derive every target from your own cost base before you look at anyone else’s benchmark. Read utilisation and margin together, always, because one can improve at the expense of the other. Measure revenue per billable person rather than per employee, because the leaks are in the billable team and averaging them across the whole firm hides them. Keep the scorecard to one page and put client profitability on it, since an unprofitable client is the most common reason the other numbers look wrong. Treat pipeline coverage as two questions and keep the sales forecast separate from the cash forecast.
Where this comes from
I knew these numbers every month for the eight years Steve and I ran the business that became DevOpsGroup, a services company helping other businesses build and run software, from 2013 until it sold for over $30m in 2021. Knowing them was never the problem. A dashboard makes a number visible without making it movable, and a weighted pipeline can look excellent while hiding two different uncertainties inside one figure. The method here is what we rebuilt after learning that, told from my notes, diaries and recollections in the newsletter as they publish. The playbooks, models and templates are in development, and each page carries a waitlist.
Playbooks and tools
- Revenue per billable person: where a consultancy's money leaks: One number that reconciles from the board pack down to a single team, a target set from your own cost base, and the four places the money leaks.
- One-page KPI scorecard for a consultancy or agency board pack: Three fixed headers and a grid, one page per unit, and a management meeting you can actually run from it.
- Pipeline coverage ratio and the cash cliff in a services business: Separate your sustainable ceiling from your best month, and read your pipeline as two questions instead of one reassuring percentage.
- Revenue per billable person model and utilisation tracker: Compute RBP at company, division, team and deal level, set a target from your own cost base, and size the four leaks.
- Monthly KPI scorecard Notion template for a consultancy or agency: A three-database Notion template for the one-page unit scorecard, with a markdown mirror.
- Revenue ceiling and cash forecast model for a services business: Find your sustainable ceiling from twelve months of revenue and set it against your own cost lines.
Guides
- KPIs for agencies and consultancies: the numbers a monthly scorecard should carry, and the ones it should not: Nine financial measures on one page, each with a written definition and the question it answers, sitting under three fixed headers that force a customer measure and a people measure onto the same page as the money.
- Cash flow forecast for a services business: billable days, pipeline coverage and the ceiling you cannot see: A services forecast is people times days times rate, minus the bench. The month you can repeat matters more than the month you are proudest of.
Definitions
- revenue per billable person: Revenue per billable person is revenue in a period divided by the number of people in a unit whose time is sold. It is revenue per employee with the denominator narrowed to the people who earn it, at company, team or deal level.
- utilisation rate: Utilisation rate is the share of a person's available working time that is billed to clients, usually billable hours divided by available hours in a period. It measures how busy a services firm's people are, not how much money that busyness makes.