How many people each manager oversees, which departments lack leadership, and where 67% of your resources have no assigned department. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.
How many people each manager oversees, which departments lack leadership, and where 67% of your resources have no assigned department. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.
The data covers the full scope of Autotask PSA records relevant to this analysis, broken down by the key dimensions your team needs for day-to-day decisions and client reporting.
Who should use this: MSP owners, HR leads, and operations managers planning workforce
How often: Monthly for headcount reviews, quarterly for planning, annually for budgeting
How many people each manager oversees, which departments lack leadership, and where 67% of your resources have no assigned department. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.
EVALUATE ROW("Employees", [Total Employees], "Managers", [Total Managers], "Ratio", [Manager Ratio], "Span", [Average Span of Control])Resource count per department, ranked from largest to smallest. "Unassigned" dominates at nearly half the workforce.
EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS(
SUMMARIZE(
BI_Autotask_Resources,
BI_Autotask_Resources[department_name]
),
"ResourceCount", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources)),
"PctOfTotal", DIVIDE(
CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources)),
COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources))
)
ORDER BY [ResourceCount] DESCWhich departments have dedicated management and what the effective span of control looks like per team
| Department | Staff | Managers | Span | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service Desk | 32 | 1 | 32:1 | Critical |
| Engineering | 16 | 1 | 16:1 | Stretched |
| Projects | 15 | 4 | 3.8:1 | Healthy |
| Management | 8 | 1 | 8:1 | Within Range |
| NOC | 8 | 1 | 8:1 | Within Range |
| Sales | 11 | 0 | — | No Manager |
| Admin | 7 | 0 | — | No Manager |
| Consulting | 5 | 0 | — | No Manager |
| Finance | 3 | 0 | — | No Manager |
| Unassigned | 79 | 0 | — | No Department |
EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS(
SUMMARIZE(
BI_Autotask_Resources,
BI_Autotask_Resources[department_name]
),
"StaffCount", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources)),
"ManagerCount", CALCULATE(
COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources),
BI_Autotask_Resources[role_name] IN {"Manager", "Project Lead", "Director"}),
"SpanOfControl", DIVIDE(
CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources)),
CALCULATE(
COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources),
BI_Autotask_Resources[role_name] IN {"Manager", "Project Lead", "Director"}))
)
ORDER BY [StaffCount] DESCFull breakdown of resource roles across the organization, from frontline technicians to leadership
| Role | Count | Tier | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technician | 39 | Frontline | |
| Specialist | 19 | Frontline | |
| Unassigned | 12 | Uncategorized | |
| Engineer II | 12 | Mid-Level | |
| Support | 11 | Frontline | |
| Admin | 10 | Support | |
| Consultant | 9 | Mid-Level | |
| Helpdesk | 6 | Frontline | |
| Architect | 5 | Senior | |
| Manager | 4 | Leadership | |
| Project Lead | 4 | Leadership | |
| Senior Engineer | 3 | Senior | |
| Director | 1 | Leadership |
EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS(
SUMMARIZE(
BI_Autotask_Resources,
BI_Autotask_Resources[role_name]
),
"ResourceCount", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(BI_Autotask_Resources))
)
ORDER BY [ResourceCount] DESCHow the workforce breaks down by tier: frontline operators, mid-level specialists, senior technical staff, and leadership
The most visible problem is the 79 resources sitting in an "Unassigned" department. That is 41.6% of the entire workforce. These people exist in Autotask but have no department mapping, which means no clear reporting line, no team-level metrics, and no way to calculate actual span of control for any manager. Before anything else, those 79 records need to be triaged: are they active employees, contractors, former staff, or API-created placeholders?
Of the departments that do have staff, Service Desk carries the heaviest load at 32 people with a single manager. A 32:1 span of control is roughly four times the recommended ratio of 6-8:1 for technical teams. At that ratio, meaningful one-on-ones, performance reviews, and escalation handling all break down. The manager becomes a bottleneck rather than a multiplier.
Engineering shows a similar pattern at 16:1. One manager overseeing 16 engineers means technical decisions, code reviews, and architecture discussions all flow through one person. That works at a startup pace, but not for sustained operations.
On the other end, Projects is well-structured at 3.8:1, with 4 Project Leads for 15 staff. That ratio allows for actual project oversight, weekly check-ins, and workload balancing. It is the one department that matches what you would see at a well-run MSP.
Four departments have zero management coverage: Sales (11 people), Admin (7), Consulting (5), and Finance (3). Sales without a manager means pipeline reviews, quota tracking, and deal forecasting are either informal or missing. For a team of 11, that is a structural gap.
The overall leadership-to-staff ratio of approximately 6.7% is below the 8-12% range that most organizational design research recommends for technical services companies. Nine management-level roles across 135 categorized resources (excluding the 79 unassigned) puts the effective span at roughly 13:1 on average.
5 priorities based on the findings above
Export the list from Autotask, cross-reference with HR or payroll, and assign every active employee to a department. Deactivate stale records. Until this is done, every organizational metric is unreliable. 41.6% of your headcount is invisible to department-level reporting.
A single manager for 32 people is not sustainable. Consider splitting into two sub-teams (e.g., Tier 1 and Tier 2) with a dedicated lead for each. This brings the span down to 16:1 per lead, still high but workable, and gives the manager room to focus on process improvement rather than daily firefighting.
Eleven people in Sales with no assigned manager means no one owns pipeline reviews, forecast accuracy, or quota attainment. If a dedicated sales manager hire is not in the budget, assign an existing manager dual responsibility and document the reporting line in Autotask. Sales is the only revenue-generating department without leadership coverage.
Engineering at 16:1 needs a buffer layer. Promoting one of the 3 Senior Engineers to a formal Tech Lead role does not require a new hire, but it does require updating the role in Autotask and giving that person explicit authority over technical reviews and escalations.
Projects is the only department with a healthy 3.8:1 span of control. Study what makes it work: clear lead assignments, defined project boundaries, regular stand-ups. Apply the same structure to Service Desk and Engineering. The model already exists internally. You do not need to invent it.
Autotask PSA stores a record for every resource (employee, contractor, or system account) in your MSP. Each record includes department, role, active status, and reporting relationships. Proxuma Power BI pulls this data through the Autotask connector into the BI_Autotask_Resources table. The AI then runs DAX queries to count, group, and calculate ratios.
Span of control is the number of direct reports a manager oversees. Research consistently shows that 6-8 direct reports is the sweet spot for technical teams. Below that, you are over-managing. Above that, you lose the ability to do meaningful one-on-ones, performance reviews, and career development. A span of 32:1, like the Service Desk in this report, means the manager cannot realistically give individual attention to each team member.
This is common in Autotask environments that have grown organically. Resources are created for API integrations, former employees are not deactivated, or new hires are added without selecting a department. The fix is straightforward: audit the list, assign active employees to departments, and deactivate records that no longer represent real people.
This report calculates span of control based on department membership and management-level roles. Autotask does not always capture formal reporting relationships as a direct field. The ratios shown are effective spans based on department size divided by management headcount. For a true org chart, you would need to map the "reports to" field if your Autotask instance has it configured.
Yes. Connect Proxuma Power BI to your Autotask account, add an AI tool (Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot) via MCP, and ask the same question. The AI writes the DAX queries, runs them against your real data, and produces a report like this in under fifteen minutes.
Connect Proxuma Power BI to your PSA, RMM, and M365 environment, use an MCP-compatible AI to ask questions, and generate custom reports - in minutes, not days.
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