Apart from the work breakdown page in your project, there is also a separate Project info page which you access via the header of your project. This page shows you in the blink of an eye three different widgets that are visible in a clear overview: Budget spent, Profit and Time tracked. In this article we will introduce you to the Profit on projects feature.


What does it do?


The profit function in Teamleader Focus will help you get a clear view of how profitable your projects actually are. You may have tons of unbilled time tracking waiting to be invoiced, but if your costs exceed your profits, you’re not exactly giving your business the opportunity to grow.


Profit calculates what costs you have made versus the billable amount created. A distinction is made between costs and billable amount. Costs equal the time tracked and materials used multiplied by the cost price. Billable amount refers to billable time and materials used multiplied by the sales price. Fixed price phases are immediately added to the billable amount.


Access your profit via the Project info page in the header of your project. You made profit? Great! The profit will be indicated in green:



Loss will be indicated in red:



For a detailed overview of your profit, click on the ‘Details’ button in the right upper corner. You’ll be led to the ‘Profitability details’ page. Profits and costs per phase will appear. Click a phase for an overview of tracked time within the phase. Clicking the time tracking itself, you’ll see how the profit was calculated.


How does it work?


Adding hourly rates

The first thing to do to start using profit efficiently is to add an internal cost and an external price for users in your account. Internal cost refers to how much a co-worker costs per hour internally, as opposed to the hourly rate at which you will invoice the customer, which is the external price. To add these:


  1. Navigate to Settings > HR.
    Note that you need admin rights in your account to be able to define the internal cost per user. 

  2. Click on the three dots next to the name of the user in the column Actions > Edit

  3. To the left of the overview you will find the fields ‘Internal cost’ and ‘External price’.


Based on these hourly rates, Teamleader Focus will calculate the profit on your projects when time tracking is added. If time tracking is marked as billable, the margin between internal cost and external price is added to your profit. If time tracking is non-billable, costs will increase, but the profit will not. After all, working hours will cost you money, even if they are not invoiced.


We imagine not every user in your account should necessarily have access to profit (we’re thinking temporary users, for example). While you’re on the user page in the HR-settings, take a look at the project settings. There’s a slider here to determine whether or not a user has access to the profit on projects widget:



External costs and additional products


Of course, profit does not just depend on time spent working. You may already know you can add external costs to a project. Click the link to find out more if you haven’t. For now, suffice to say these allow you to keep track of any additional purchases you have to make during a project. You can also add products when tracking time via the + sign, which will be added to your invoice automatically if your phase is set to time & material. This option is not activated by default. If you'd like to use this, please reach out to our support team. They'll be happy to activate it for you.

If you’ve added external costs (or added products when time tracking) that do not have a linked purchase price, the Profit & Loss box will display the following message:


What about phases set to ‘Fixed price’?


The former situation assumes your phases are set to ‘time and material’. But how is the profit calculated if you invoice your phases for a fixed price?


In that case, the amounts of your fixed price phases are immediately added to the billable amount of your profit.


Tracked time and materials do not influence your billable amount (which is the amount of your fixed price). However they do influence your costs:

  • Time tracking: Costs are still affected by time tracking because work costs money, regardless of your invoicing method. The internal cost of the user(s) that tracked time will thus be added to your costs.
  • Materials: Costs are still affected by the purchase price of the products you added. The sum of the purchase prices of your products (at least if they were all filled out) will be added to your costs.


If you have more questions about profit on projects, or anything else for that matter, contact our support team by clicking the question mark in the top right-hand corner of your account and click Support Centre > Contact us to submit your question.


Do you prefer to watch our instructive video ? You can do so right here: