Services · Implementation
Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled.
This marketing & margin audit surfaced $47k in recurring annual margin in a Services business — evidenced, senior-reviewed, and delivered in 6 days.
The business
A software implementation consultancy delivered onboarding and configuration projects, billing clients for the core work. Kickoff meetings, travel to client sites and early-stage onboarding time had grown up as things the team simply absorbed, and because projects were being delivered and clients were satisfied, that unbilled effort was never quantified against project margin.
What triggered the audit
Project margins were thinner than the day rates implied they should be, pointing at unbilled delivery rather than pricing. The audit reconciled the total hours and costs consumed per project — including travel and onboarding time — against what was actually billed, testing how much delivery effort was going uncharged.
What the audit found
A significant slice of delivery was being given away for free. Reconciling real project effort against billing showed that travel time, kickoff and discovery sessions, and hand-holding through early onboarding were routinely absorbed rather than billed — treated as goodwill or overhead when they were, in fact, chargeable delivery hours. Because these hours sat outside the core scope and were never tracked against the project, each engagement quietly ran thinner than its day rate suggested, and the consultancy was effectively subsidizing a portion of every project. Since projects landed and clients were happy, the leak was invisible in the healthy-looking top line. Quantified across the book, the unbilled delivery came to roughly $47k a year.
What we changed
Reconciled total project effort — travel, kickoff, discovery and early onboarding — against what was billed, exposing the delivery hours being quietly absorbed.
Built travel and onboarding time explicitly into scopes and statements of work, so chargeable delivery is billed rather than gifted as goodwill.
Set clear inclusions and change-order triggers, so any effort beyond the agreed scope is captured and billed instead of absorbed.
Made project margin against fully-loaded delivery a monitored metric, so unbilled hours can’t quietly erode it engagement after engagement.
The result
$47k a year recovered by billing the delivery that was quietly being given away — an 8× return on the $5,950 Audit + Sprint fee. For any consultancy, the leak is cultural: travel, kickoff and onboarding get absorbed as goodwill when they’re chargeable hours, so every project runs thinner than its day rate. If you don’t reconcile total effort to billing, you may be subsidizing a slice of every engagement. A fixed-fee audit quantifies it in days and builds the uncharged work back into scope.
From kickoff to signed-off findings: 6 days — inside our fixed 5–7 day window.