A profitability breakdown of 279 projects across 8 clients from Autotask PSA, mapping revenue against cost per project to surface the winners, the losers, and the patterns that separate them. PSA
A profitability breakdown of 279 projects across 8 clients from Autotask PSA, mapping revenue against cost per project to surface the winners, the losers, and the patterns that separate them. PSA
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, finance leads, and operations managers tracking profitability
How often: Monthly for financial reviews, quarterly for strategic planning, on-demand for pricing decisions
A profitability breakdown of 279 projects across 8 clients from Autotask PSA, mapping revenue against cost per project to surface the winners, the losers, and the patterns that separate them. PSA
Portfolio-level financial metrics across all 279 tracked projects.
Top 12 projects by total revenue. Project Alpha alone accounts for 15.8% of the entire portfolio.
EVALUATE
TOPN(
12,
ADDCOLUMNS(
SUMMARIZE(
'BI_Autotask_Projects',
'BI_Autotask_Projects'[project_name],
'BI_Autotask_Projects'[company_name]
),
"Revenue", [Project Total Revenue],
"Cost", [Project Total Cost],
"Profit", [Project Profit],
"Margin", [Project Profit Margin %]
),
[Revenue], DESC
)Margin distribution across the top 12 projects. Donut shows overall split, bars compare individual margins.
EVALUATE
ROW(
"ProjectCount", COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Projects'),
"TotalRevenue", [Project Total Revenue],
"TotalCost", [Project Total Cost],
"TotalProfit", [Project Profit],
"AvgMargin", [Project Profit Margin %]
)Side-by-side comparison of revenue (teal) and cost (navy) for the top 12 projects. The gap between bars is your profit.
How project revenue distributes across clients. Client C runs four of the top 12 projects, making them the most project-active account.
| Client | Projects | Revenue | Cost | Profit | Avg Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client A | 2 | $254,475 | $137,937 | $116,538 | 45.8% |
| Client C | 4 | $170,579 | $77,920 | $92,660 | 54.3% |
| Client B | 1 | $88,995 | $62,510 | $26,485 | 29.8% |
| Client D | 1 | $59,583 | $27,299 | $32,284 | 54.2% |
| Client E | 1 | $49,122 | $25,730 | $23,392 | 47.6% |
| Client F | 1 | $39,867 | $18,507 | $21,359 | 53.6% |
| Client G | 1 | $29,887 | $17,721 | $12,166 | 40.7% |
| Client H | 1 | $26,162 | $10,652 | $15,510 | 59.3% |
EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS(
SUMMARIZE(
'BI_Autotask_Projects',
'BI_Autotask_Projects'[company_name]
),
"Projects", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Projects')),
"Revenue", [Project Total Revenue],
"Cost", [Project Total Cost],
"Profit", [Project Profit],
"AvgMargin", [Project Profit Margin %]
)
ORDER BY [Revenue] DESCThis is the second-largest project by revenue ($89K), but it returns the lowest margin in the top 12. The cost-to-revenue ratio suggests scope creep, underpriced work, or resource inefficiency that needs immediate review.
Projects Gamma, Foxtrot, Kilo, and Lima all sit above 52% margin. This client relationship is well-scoped and well-staffed. It is the kind of account worth replicating across the portfolio.
A single project contributing nearly a sixth of total revenue at below-average margin is a concentration risk. If costs on Alpha increase by just 10%, the entire portfolio margin drops noticeably.
Projects Juliet ($26K, 59.3%), Kilo ($26K, 58.0%), and India ($27K, 56.1%) all beat the portfolio average by 7-10 points. Smaller scope tends to mean tighter delivery and less unbillable time.
The remaining 267 projects split the other half. That means a large portion of the portfolio is made up of small, potentially low-visibility engagements where cost overruns can hide unnoticed.
The 49.7% average margin looks solid on the surface, but the range tells a different story. The spread between the best margin (59.3% on Project Juliet) and the worst (29.8% on Project Beta) is nearly 30 percentage points. That kind of variance in a single portfolio means profitability depends heavily on which projects land in any given quarter.
Revenue concentration is real. Client A alone drives $254K across two projects, but at a below-average 45.8% margin. Client C runs four projects totalling $171K at a healthy 54.3%. The pattern is clear: multi-project client relationships with smaller, well-scoped work outperform large single-project engagements with a single client.
Project Beta deserves a cost audit. At $89K revenue and $62.5K cost, it is burning through resources faster than any other top project. The 29.8% margin sits almost 20 points below the portfolio average. Whether that is due to scope changes, rework, or an underpriced contract, the numbers say something is off.
The strongest signal from this data: right-sized projects (in the $25K-$50K range) consistently deliver the best margins. Six of the top 12 projects fall in this band, and all of them run above 47% margin. When projects scale beyond $80K, margin compression kicks in.
| Priority | Action | Owner | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Run a detailed cost audit on Project Beta to identify where the 29.8% margin leak is happening | Project Lead | This week |
| High | Review Project Alpha pricing and scope against actuals to reduce concentration risk | Account Manager | 2 weeks |
| Medium | Establish a margin floor (e.g. 40%) as a gate for new project approvals | Operations | 30 days |
| Medium | Replicate the Client C engagement model across other multi-project accounts | Sales | Next quarter |
| Standard | Build a monthly project margin dashboard that flags any project dropping below 35% | BI Team | Next sprint |
Profit margin is (Revenue minus Cost) divided by Revenue, shown as a percentage. Revenue comes from project billing in Autotask, and cost includes labour cost based on resource rates and hours logged against each project.
The charts show the top 12 by revenue. The KPIs and summary statistics cover all 279 projects. You can run the DAX queries above with a higher TOPN value to expand the view.
Cost is the sum of internal labour cost based on each resource's hourly cost rate multiplied by hours logged to the project. It does not include overhead, licensing, or third-party expenses unless those are tracked as project charges in Autotask.
Larger projects tend to have higher cost ratios due to longer timelines, more resource involvement, and greater scope complexity. Alpha's $126K cost base suggests heavy resource consumption relative to the billing rate.
Yes. Copy any query from the toggles above and paste it into DAX Studio or the Power BI Desktop performance analyzer. The queries reference standard Proxuma data model tables and measures that exist in every Proxuma Power BI deployment.
Monthly at minimum. Project costs accumulate fast, and catching a margin slide early gives you time to adjust scope, staffing, or billing before the damage compounds. Quarterly reviews work for the portfolio-level trends.
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