Receivable days from 18 to 5, and margin visible per project
A project-based studio, engaged January 2025
Bookkeeping and weekly reporting
- Receivable days 18 to 5
- In one month
A weekly reporting rhythm, a written follow-up process for late invoices, and per-project margin built from tracked time rather than estimates.
18 to 5
Accounts receivable days, 13 days faster inside one month
3,736 hours
Tracked time behind the margin report
Percentages, multiples, counts and timeframes only. Client revenue, profit and cash figures stay private.
The short version
- A project studio with lumpy revenue and contractor delivery cost, so it was hard to tell which engagements made money.
- We built a weekly income and expense report, a weekly receivables snapshot, and a written rule for chasing late invoices.
- Receivable days went from 18 to 5 in a month.
- Then per-project margin, built from logged hours rather than estimates.
Waiting too long to get paid?
A weekly report and a written rule moved this one 13 days in a month.
The situation
Project work is a harder reporting problem than a retainer shop. Revenue arrives in lumps. Delivery cost is hours, spread across contractors. Whether a given engagement made money is a real question.
Before
- Books kept in-house, then handed to someone else
- Emails going days without a reply
- Reporting arriving on no rhythm you could plan around
What they asked for
- Weekly reporting they could count on
- A forecast far enough ahead to see a gap coming
- To stop wondering whether something had been forgotten
We started in January 2025 and took the books over in February.
What we built
A weekly income and expense report
Income, cost of goods sold, expenses and net income across four discrete weeks, with a four-week total and average beside three trailing monthly columns. Underneath, 15 itemised expense lines.
Why four weeks and not one
A single week in a project business is noise. Four weeks with a running average is a signal.
A weekly receivables snapshot, and the rule for acting on it
A full aging report runs once a week. A simplified version goes to the person who owns follow-up: which customers are open, the invoice numbers, the amounts, and days past due.
Then the written part, which is what makes it work:
- 1
10 days past due triggers a reminder
A professional email, sent by their team.
- 2
Every attempt gets logged
So the log shows who was chased and when.
- 3
Non-responses and disputes escalate
To the owner, and to us.
- 4
A Loom explains how to read the report
So the process survives whoever is running it this quarter.
Who chases the money
Not us. Receivables management is excluded from every agreement we write, deliberately. We build the report that says who is late and by how much. Their team sends the emails, because a bookkeeper inside your client relationships creates more friction than it removes.
Per-project margin, because they asked for it
In August 2025 the studio told us the single profitability number on the dashboard was "too vague." Fair. It answered whether the business made money and said nothing about which work made it.
we need to know how profitable our contractors are to us.
They wanted margin per project after contractor hours, rates and tax, and margin per contractor. The reason was uncomfortable: a contractor billed as full-time was working roughly half those hours at the same pay. Nothing in the reporting would have surfaced it.
How the margin number gets built
Contractors log hours in Clockify. That feeds QuickBooks against the right project and customer. Margin comes from measured time, not estimates.
The report carries hours, time cost, fixed cost, invoiced amount, margin and margin percent for every engagement, off 3,736 hours of logged contractor time.
A second grid shows margin by client by month, so an engagement going bad shows up in the month it turns rather than at year end.
A monthly performance report over the top
Revenue against target and rolling average, operating margin, break-even and margin of safety, top ten expense accounts, a three-month expense comparison, operating cash flow, and a combined cash and receivables chart. The margin series runs back several years, so the current month has context.
Project-based and can't tell which work pays?
Per-project margin from tracked hours is on the Scale tier. We'll show you how it's built.
What they wanted from it
Two things from the first call have shaped every deliverable since.
One was a design brief, and it is why none of these reports is clever: the simpler the system, the easier it is to keep up with.
The other was the goal, and it was never a number. It was peace of mind across all the accounts. Which is why the receivables work mattered more than the margin reporting did.
I want it emailed monthly and then I also want access too.
What this maps to
- Service: the agency KPI dashboard, and the monthly close underneath it
- OS module: Implementation Checklist, for turning reports into a working cadence
- OS module: Agency Profit Engine, for reading a margin number against a benchmark
Questions
The ones people actually ask on the first call
How do you cut receivable days from 18 to 5?
A weekly aging snapshot plus a written rule about when to act. Any invoice 10 or more days past due triggers a reminder email, every attempt is logged, and non-responses escalate. The reporting is ours and the follow-up is their team.
Why does per-project margin need tracked hours?
Delivery cost in a project business is time, and estimated time is a guess. Building margin from time entries is what separates your best engagements from your worst.
Who sends the reminder emails on a late invoice?
Their team, never us. Receivables management is excluded from every agreement we write. We generate the aging report and the snapshot that says who is late and by how much, and a Loom explains how to read it.
Do the reports only surface good news?
No. Anything moving the wrong way sits in the same headline block as the things moving the right way, not in a footnote. A report that only shows wins stops getting read.
How long did the receivables fix take to show up?
One month. The weekly snapshot and the follow-up rule went live together, and receivable days came down 13 days over the next cycle.
Next step
Thirty minutes, and you'll know where you stand
Bring last month's P&L. We'll tell you what it's actually saying about your margin, your owner pay and your next hire. If we're not the right people to fix it, we'll say so on the call.
You bring
Last month's P&L. That's it. No prep, no forms.
We do
Read it live and tell you what it says about margin, owner pay and your next hire.
You leave with
The two or three things worth fixing first, whether or not you hire us.
No deck, no pitch. If we're not the right people for it, we'll say so on the call.