--- title: "Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled | MarginFix" description: "Delivery hours around kickoff and travel were absorbed rather than billed to the engagement. Marketing & margin audit: $47k/yr in margin identified." url: https://marginfix.ai/cases/travel-and-onboarding-time-was-going-unbilled/ lastmod: 2026-10-12 --- Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled. [Request an audit →](/book/) Services · Implementation # Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled. This marketing & margin audit surfaced **$47k in annual margin** in a Services business, evidenced, senior reviewed, and delivered in 6 days. $1–3M annual revenue Implementation Focus: Unbilled delivery +$47k margin recovered / yr +6pts project margin 6 days to findings Delivery hours actually billed to clients Before audit ~80% → After fix 98% ## 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. ◉ How we produced this finding MarginFix surfaced the unbilled delivery finding forensically, reconciling the services numbers against what was genuinely delivered and paid, not what was assumed. The gap was traced to its source line and signed off by a named senior auditor before anything was reported. Data sources: Contracts, invoices, billing records and delivery or fulfillment logs, reconciled against each other, so the exact gap behind unbilled delivery is traced to the specific line driving it rather than estimated from the top down. Key frameworks: Line by line ledger and contract reconciliation, unit economics and cost to serve analysis, framed by Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) for evidenced business value, cost and risk. Human validation gate: Every reconciled figure is checked against your own records and signed off by a named senior auditor before it ships. Nothing is reported without a human tracing it to source. Verified against Time tracking / utilization Carrier / freight invoices Project P&L CRM pipeline Invoiced revenue The margin recovered / yr was measured like for like over a matched period, reconciled to the billed and delivered project P&L, and signed off by a named senior auditor before publication. Client identity redacted to protect their commercial position. WORKING PAPER ████████ Implementation Representative Redacted Work type Hours billed Core delivery 100% Config work 96% Travel & kickoff 80% margin recovered / yr +$47,320 Recurring, recovered every year the fix holds, not a one off. Working paper: delivery hours actually billed to clients traced line by line and reconciled to the billed and delivered project P&L over a matched period. Line items representative and redacted; the recovered figure is the reconciled audit finding. ## 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 The published chart shows delivery hours billed to clients rising from about 80% to 98%, an 18 percentage point increase. The annual figure describes delivery that had gone unbilled; the published material does not split invoiced recovery from future scope or pricing changes. $47k a year recovered by billing the delivery that was quietly being given away, an annual figure equal to 8× 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. ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) Reviewed & signed off by: Leslie Martin Senior Auditor · MarginFix · 10+ years of auditing experience ✓ Anonymized to protect the client · senior reviewed findings · Published September 8, 2025 · Last reviewed October 12, 2026 ## What the client said SERVICES Approved Sep 2025 $47k a year found in 6 days Delivery hours actually billed to clients: **~80% → 98%** “Every project ran thinner than its day rate. Leslie reconciled real effort against billing and found travel, kickoff and early onboarding absorbed as goodwill. Those hours are written into every scope now.” **VP of Client Success · Services · Implementation** Written approval Under NDA 6 days to findings ![Portrait photograph of Leslie Martin](/assets/team/leslie-martin.jpg) **Leslie Martin** Senior Auditor · signed this audit off [Request an audit →](/book/) [Prefer to talk it through first? Talk to an auditor →](/book/call/) ## More Services findings [Quoting ignored callback and warranty cost, +$44k/yr](/cases/quoting-ignored-callback-and-warranty-cost/) [Lead spend ignored close rate by source, +$47k/yr](/cases/lead-spend-ignored-close-rate-by-source/) [Intake was dropping a third of qualified calls, +$62k/yr](/cases/intake-was-dropping-a-third-of-qualified-calls/) [Every location bought the same keywords against each other, −$39k/yr](/cases/every-location-bought-the-same-keywords-against-each-other/) [Retainers were priced below delivery cost, +$54k/yr](/cases/retainers-were-priced-below-delivery-cost/) [Fixed fee packages were scoped below the hours they consumed, +$52k/yr](/cases/fixed-fee-packages-were-scoped-below-the-hours-they-consumed/) [The benchmark: what audits recover across 74 cases →](/benchmark/) [All case studies](/case-studies/) [Model a Services budget in the wasted ad spend calculator →](/estimator/services/)