NARRATIVE 04 / 05·The Financials narrative

Firm profit visibility, across scenarios.

A live firm-level P&L shows how signed work, extensions, pipeline, people cost, and overhead move EBT, so leaders see the shape of profit before the close confirms it.

The pain

You close the month and discover that profit is 15 points lower than forecast. The forecast assumed bench cost would be flat, but three people started on the bench mid-month and no one had updated the assumption. Or a phase on a fixed-price project slipped by two weeks and carried delivery cost into next month. Or non-billable cost spiked because of an allocation pattern no one had seen coming.

By the time the accounting close lands, there is no way to course-correct for the next 30 days. The variance is explained, not prevented.

Profitdrive changes that by giving you a live firm-level P&L that updates as projects, people, and costs change, so you can see which levers are moving the margin and act before the month closes.

What this narrative covers

The firm's forward profit, on one set of numbers.

Financials is where the model resolves into the P&L: Revenue, Delivery Cost, Contribution, Non-Billable Production Cost, SG&A, EBT. The view updates as deals, projects, people, leave, and cost changes are recorded, so leaders see the shape of profit before the accounting close explains it.

Five surfaces do that work. The P&L Outlook shows the firm-level monthly profit across three cumulative scenarios. The operating KPIs behind it, utilisation, headcount, billed days, and daily rate and cost, move in the same three lenses, so the operating picture and the money stay together. Every cell in the P&L drills back to its source: the project, the assignment, the person, the day. Non-Billable Production Cost is broken out so operational investment is visible rather than buried in margin. And imported Actuals and Budget sit alongside the live forecast as read-only comparison lenses.

Scope firewall

Profitdrive is not an accounting system. It does not replace GL, tax, or compliance; that is the accounting software's job. What Profitdrive gives you is a live firm-level profit picture that moves as the business moves, and shows the impact of different scenarios before commitments lock in.

Surface

Function

01

P&L Outlook

Firm-level monthly profit across three cumulative scenarios: Contracted, + Extensions, + Pipeline.

02

Operating KPIs

Utilisation, FTE, billed days, daily rate and cost, and open roles behind the P&L, in the same three scenarios.

03

Drill to source

Every P&L cell traces back to the project, assignment, person, and day behind it.

04

Non-Billable Production Cost

Bench, internal projects, paid / unpaid leave, variance: one composition view.

05

Comparison lenses

Imported Actuals and Budget sit beside the live forecast as read-only views.

Four concrete front-end behaviours

What operators see, and what the system carries through.

BEHAVIOUR 01 / 04

See monthly profit across Contracted, + Extensions, and + Pipeline.

The P&L Outlook shows a table with months across columns and the firm-level P&L lines down the rows: Revenue, Delivery Cost, Contribution Margin, Internal Delivery Cost, Gross Margin, SG&A, EBT. Above the table, three cumulative scenario pills: Contracted, Contracted + Extensions, Contracted + Extensions + Pipeline.

You set the month range to Apr to Sep. Contracted opens at $600k monthly revenue and 29% gross margin on signed work, but the book runs off across the window: by September revenue is $250k, gross margin is 21%, and EBT has crossed from +13% to −15% as fixed SG&A carries a shrinking revenue base. You switch to Contracted + Extensions and the decline softens where renewals are signed; the full forward view shows where pipeline must convert to refill the gap. Three different profit paths are visible in one place.

The P&L lines are the ordinary ones, Revenue down to EBT. What is not ordinary is where the numbers come from: every figure resolves to a specific day in a specific project, assignment, or person, rather than being assembled in a separate workbook. As assignments are added, extensions signed, or people cost changes, the view recomputes from that same foundation, so there is no spreadsheet bridge and no separate close calculation that could diverge from what has been tracking all month.

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Profitdrive //

Caldera Group

Financials

OutlookActualsBudget

Apr 2026toSep 2026ContractedExtensionsPipelinePL Detail

P&L Line · $kApr 26May 26Jun 26Jul 26Aug 26Sep 26

Revenue$600k$540k$460k$380k$310k$250k

Consultants404039383634

Delivery Cost$330k$305k$267k$226k$189k$155k

Contribution Margin$270k$235k$193k$154k$121k$95k

Contribution %45.0%43.5%42.0%40.5%39.0%38.0%

Internal Delivery Cost$96k$86k$73k$61k$51k$42k

Gross Margin$174k$149k$120k$93k$70k$53k

GM %29.0%27.5%26.0%24.5%22.5%21.0%

SG&A Cost$96k$95k$94k$93k$91k$91k

EBT$78k$54k$26k$0-$21k-$38k

EBT %13.0%9.9%5.6%0.0%-6.9%-15.0%

GroundedShell, tabs, scenario buttons, month range, and PL Detail match the current app. Row labels follow the app's P&L. Contracted book runs off Apr to Sep; EBT turns negative as fixed SG&A carries the falling revenue.

P&L Outlook · three cumulative scenarios · Contracted, + Extensions, + Pipeline.

BEHAVIOUR 02 / 04

Read the operating KPIs behind the P&L, in the same three scenario lenses.

Below the P&L, the same Apr–Sep months carry the operating drivers: Utilisation% (own staff), FTE, Billed Days, Daily Rate, Daily Cost, and Open roles (FTE). It reads in the same three cumulative lenses as the P&L, Contracted, + Extensions, + Pipeline, so the operating picture and the money move together rather than living in separate reports.

On Contracted, the KPI strip tells the same story the P&L does, earlier and more concretely. Utilisation falls from 68% in April to 35% by September as billed days drop faster than headcount; daily rate and daily cost together show the spread the firm earns per delivered day; and open roles appear from June as the staffing gap the signed book can no longer fill. The bench building up here is the margin problem in the P&L before it lands as one.

These are the levers, not just the readout. Switching the scenario lens recomputes every KPI, so you can see what utilisation, billed days, and open roles look like if extensions sign or pipeline converts, not only on the signed book. And each driver expands to its source: FTE to the people, billed days to the projects and assignments, daily cost to the cost in effect on the day, read from the same foundation as the P&L, never reconstructed alongside it.

P//

Profitdrive //

Caldera Group

Financials

OutlookActualsBudget

Apr 2026toSep 2026ContractedExtensionsPipelinePL Detail

KPIApr 26May 26Jun 26Jul 26Aug 26Sep 26

Utilisation% (own staff)68%62%54%47%41%35%

FTE424241403836

Billed Days600545469394325263

Daily Rate$1,000$990$980$965$955$950

Daily Cost$550$560$569$574$582$589

Open roles (FTE)0.00.01.01.02.02.0

GroundedThe KPI detail that sits below the P&L: utilisation, FTE, billed days, daily rate and cost, open roles. Same three scenario lenses as the P&L; every KPI recomputes per lens. Contracted shows the signed book running off, utilisation falling as billed days drop faster than headcount.

KPI detail · operating drivers below the P&L · Utilisation, FTE, Billed Days, Daily Rate, Daily Cost, Open roles · scenario-aware across Contracted, + Extensions, + Pipeline.

BEHAVIOUR 03 / 04

Make non-billable cost visible instead of hidden in the margin.

Non-Billable Production Cost is the bench, internal-project, and leave-related cost that does not attach to client delivery. In the P&L Outlook it appears as a line item broken into components: Bench Cost, Internal Projects, Leave, Variance. April: bench $54k (five consultants unassigned), paid leave $12k (one consultant on annual leave), internal projects $24k (two people in training), variance $6k. Total Non-Billable Production Cost for April: $96k. SG&A below at $96k, covering administrative staff, rent, software, insurance. Together: $192k overhead, 32% of revenue.

You see bench cost is the largest controllable line. You drill in: five consultants by name, daily costs $470 to $560, one of them on the bench four weeks. You check Open Roles in the People area, where three projects need staffing. You fill that consultant onto one. The bench line in the P&L drops to $42k for April; the person's cost moves into Delivery Cost on the project they were assigned to. You also notice that internal training in July is costing two margin points. You ask the delivery lead whether that month is essential, and they confirm it can shift to June. You move it; July margin improves.

The composition matters for steering. Bench is the hiring signal. Internal projects (training, sales, admin) are a growth investment with a cost, visible, not hidden. Paid leave reduces capacity but not cost (the person is still paid); unpaid leave reduces both. SG&A is the fixed overhead that does not move with deal conversion. Lumping these together hides the trade-offs; separating them makes operational investment a deliberate decision and makes the levers operators can actually move visible.

There is also a structural insight the Outlook makes visible that most forecasting tools blur. A deal staffed with own people adds revenue against a fixed cost base: those people are paid whether the deal lands or not, so each billable day is revenue against incremental zero, with the cost showing up as reduced Non-Billable Production Cost rather than new Delivery Cost. A deal staffed with contractors adds revenue against genuinely incremental cost: contractor days only exist if the deal does. Leaders know this intuitively; the Outlook shows it explicitly, in the line items, scenario by scenario.

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Profitdrive //

Caldera Group

Financials

Conceptual

OutlookActualsBudget

Non-Billable Production Cost · Apr 2026 · variable5 components

Bench5 people · $470 to $560 / day$54k

Internal Projects2 people · training$24k

Leave · paid1 person · annual leave$12k

Leave · unpaidnone scheduled

Varianceforecast vs actual$6k

Total NBPC$96k

SG&A · fixedAdministrative · rent · software · insurance does not scale with deal conversion$96k

Total overhead

NBPC + SG&A · April

NBPC

$96k

SG&A

$96k

Total · 32% rev

$192k

ConceptualThe five-component composition card was not observed as a standalone surface. It keeps the concept name "Non-Billable Production Cost"; the app's P&L row for this concept is labelled "Internal Delivery Cost".

Non-Billable Production Cost · five components · variable overhead vs fixed SG&A · own-staff and contractor cost resolved separately.

BEHAVIOUR 04 / 04

Keep budget and actuals structurally separate from the live forecast.

The P&L Outlook has three view options: Live Forecast, vs Budget, and vs Actuals. Live Forecast is the default: the forward-looking P&L based on projects, people, and opportunities. The vs Budget and vs Actuals views sit alongside the Live Forecast as read-only comparison lenses, displaying side by side with the same row structure (Revenue, Delivery Cost, Contribution, Non-Billable Production Cost, SG&A, EBT).

Budget targets are imported or set at the start of the quarter; Actuals are imported from your accounting system. Both are versioned for audit trail: when revised Actuals are imported, prior versions are preserved in history. The comparison views do not change the Live Forecast itself; they sit beside it. Live Forecast continues to update as projects, people, and costs change. Imported data is historical and static; the forecast is continuous.

The structural point is more important than the variance arithmetic. Budget and Actuals are comparison lenses against the forward view, not inputs to it. The firm gets to see three time perspectives in one place: what was planned (Budget), what happened (Actuals), and what is now expected (Live Forecast), without any of them overwriting another. The Live Forecast remains the firm's working view of where the month is going.

P//

Profitdrive //

Caldera Group

Financials

Conceptual

OutlookActualsBudget

In the app these are separate tabs. The conceptual view below places them side by side as read-only comparison lenses.

P&L line · AprBudgetLive forecastActualsΔ vs fcst

Revenue$590k$600k$592k-$8k

Delivery Cost$325k$330k$328k-$2k

Contribution$265k$270k$264k-$6k

Non-Billable Production Cost$95k$96k$97k+$1k

SG&A$96k$96k$96k

EBT$74k$78k$71k-$7k

Read-onlyComparison lenses never alter the Live Forecast. Imported Actuals are versioned; Budget is set in Settings.v3 · IMPORT 5 MAY

ConceptualThe app exposes Outlook, Actuals, and Budget as separate tabs. A single combined comparison table was not observed; this side-by-side is conceptual.

Live Forecast · vs Budget · vs Actuals · read-only comparison lenses · forecast continues to update.

How this connects to the rest

This narrative does not stand alone.

To Pipeline

The Deal Model becomes the commercial case for the deal: revenue, cost, and margin assumptions on the firm's real data, against firm-wide targets. When the deal converts, those assumptions flow into the Contracted scenario on the P&L Outlook. The Pipeline scenario carries qualified funnel work at full value into the forward view: what the firm's P&L looks like if the funnel converts as modelled.

See the Pipeline narrative

To Projects

Project Financials Summary shows each project's revenue and cost contribution; those roll up into the P&L Outlook monthly rows. Signed extensions move into the Contracted scenario; open extensions sit in the + Extensions view. Open Roles in Project Plans surface as cost risk if unfilled when delivery margin depends on them.

See the Projects narrative

To People

Every person's cost, including salary, grade, overrides, and on-costs, resolves through the same hierarchy and flows into Delivery Cost (assignments) and Non-Billable Production Cost (bench, internal projects, leave). When a grade changes, leave is recorded, or a person is assigned to a project, their contribution to the P&L updates immediately. Open Roles show their projected cost impact in the forward outlook.

See the People narrative

To Dashboard

The Outlook surface on the Dashboard shows the headline financial posture (Revenue, EBT, Utilisation) across the three scenarios. A simplified cockpit view of the full P&L. Outlook Drivers highlights which deals, extensions, and projects are moving the forward P&L the most. The Dashboard is for daily and weekly executive decisions; this narrative provides the full analytical view and the drill-down chain.

See the Dashboard narrative

Closing

See how the firm's profit takes shape: across scenarios, traceable to source, updated as the business moves.

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