Delivery margin
Not enough history yet to compare week over week. With 3 readings recorded so far, movement for delivery margin can first be shown on Aug 27.
Nothing to do. Values are recorded once a day and this fills in on its own.
Where it stands
No history to chart yet
only 1 measured period of history exist for this metric, and a trend needs at least 3. History builds as the daily capture runs. The chart appears once there are a few periods to draw.
Delivery margin reads 83% against floor 50%, which is inside its band. The work itself is earning enough to fund the firm around it.
- Window
- Stated as of Aug 23, 2026. The period the reading covers is set by its source and is not stated on this tile.
- How it is counted
- Adjusted gross income less the recorded people cost that belongs to delivery roles, taken as a share of adjusted gross income. Delivery's share of the cost comes from its share of the payroll on file, so a team of expensive specialists is not treated the same as a team of the same size on junior rates. The software and tools the work runs on are recorded with the rest of overhead and cannot be separated from it, so this is the people half only and sits above a fully loaded figure.
- Source
- Financial ledger, as of Aug 23, 2026
- Drivers
- Reasoned from this metric's own definition and sources. The driver breakdown is not composed for this tile yet, and the section below says what it would take.
What this is
What is left of earned income after paying the people who produce the work. Adjusted gross income less the recorded people cost that belongs to delivery roles, taken as a share of adjusted gross income. Delivery's share of the cost comes from its share of the payroll on file, so a team of expensive specialists is not treated the same as a team of the same size on junior rates. The software and tools the work runs on are recorded with the rest of overhead and cannot be separated from it, so this is the people half only and sits above a fully loaded figure.
Why it is on your dashboard
Everything else on this board is downstream of this one number. It is what the work itself earns before the firm around it is paid for: sales, admin, rent, and the owner. Below about 50% there is not enough left to fund a firm, and no amount of selling fixes it, because every new project arrives at the same margin. Toward 60% is a healthy production engine. It sits on this board against floor 50%.
Why it is where it is
Not answered here.
This subtracts one cost from earned income, and the cost it cannot see is the one you would ask about. The people side is split by job function and read from what payroll actually cost. The software and tools the work runs on are recorded with the rest of overhead and carry no delivery marking, so they cannot be separated out, and this reading sits above a fully loaded one by roughly what they cost.
The expense record classifies each row as a pass-through, a people cost or an overhead cost, and that is the only split it carries. Marking the overhead lines that belong to production, once per recurring cost, would let this section name what the work runs on and close the points this reading is currently missing.
What we checked, in order
Not answered here.
There is no ruled order of checks for Delivery margin yet. Three of these ordered diagnostics exist and they attach to the profit share, an account under the floor, and absorbed work. This metric is not one of them.
An ordered set of checks is worth more than a list of things to look at, because the order is what stops the most expensive move being tried first. Writing one for this metric is a decision about how it should be diagnosed rather than a gap in the data.
Root cause
A thin delivery margin has three usual causes and they are not interchangeable. The work was priced below what it costs to produce, which is a pricing problem and shows up on every new project. It was priced correctly and then overran, which is a scoping problem and shows up in write-offs and on-budget delivery. Or it was priced and scoped correctly and staffed too senior, which is a delivery problem and is the one that hides best, because every individual decision behind it was defensible. Which of the three is running is not decidable from this level, because the level is the result of all of them, and this page will not choose for you. It can put the two readings that separate them in front of you: Write-offs reads $68k, with no band set for it; and On-budget delivery reads 90%, with no band set for it. Read those as a pair rather than as a verdict. Both of them healthy alongside a thin margin points at the price rather than at the delivery, and this page states the pointing rather than the conclusion, because the third cause moves neither of them.
What to do now
Not answered here.
The margin is holding on this read, so there is nothing here to correct this week.
Worth re-reading after any change to how work is staffed, because this number moves with the seniority mix on live projects long before it moves on a rate card.
What stops it coming back
Estimate at the level the work will actually be delivered at, and check the estimate against the hours afterwards as a conversation rather than as a score. The margin is decided when work is quoted and staffed, and read here months later.
By the time this number moves the work that moved it has already been delivered, so nothing on this page can change the period it describes. What can change is the next quote and the next staffing decision, and the firms that hold this margin are the ones where the person quoting and the person staffing are looking at the same estimate.
This closes no measured driver above, and does not claim to.
What happens if this is ignored
A thin delivery margin does not announce itself, because every other tile can look fine while it runs. Billings grow, the team is busy, utilization holds, and there is simply never any money left at the end of the year. The usual response is to sell more, which adds volume at the same margin and makes the firm bigger without making it more profitable, and the year after that is the one where a hiring freeze is described as discipline. Where this lands is not this tile. It is AGI allocation reads 21% against profit share, target ~20%, which it is inside. It is inside its band today, which is what holding this position is currently buying you. Everything the work does not keep has to come out of the same whole, so a thin delivery margin arrives as a thin remainder. That is why a firm can be busy, growing and still find there is nothing left at the end of the year.
Is this target still telling you anything
Not answered here.
1 captured month periods are stored against a window of 12.
Whether a target is set at a useful level is read over 12 periods, and this metric has 1 stored so far. This fills in on its own as the history builds.