Profitability analysis: see what actually makes and loses money.
Your profit-and-loss tells you whether the business made money overall. Profitability analysis tells you where — by product, service line, customer, project or job, and location — so you stop subsidizing the work that loses money with the work that earns it. We break the numbers down using your own QuickBooks data: gross versus net margin, contribution margin, and true job profitability. This is advisory work, not a regulated or assurance service.
What you can check before you sign
- Fixed fee, written first
- Your own QuickBooks file
- No hourly billing
If your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Profitability analysis breaks your bottom-line profit into its parts — by product, service line, customer, project or job, and location — using gross, net and contribution margin read from clean QuickBooks data. It starts with a free file review, runs as one fixed fee scoped in writing, and is advisory work, not an audit: the decisions stay yours.
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The dimensions worth breaking profit down by.
Which of these matters most depends on how your business earns — a project shop lives on job profitability; a multi-location retailer on location and product. We scope to the few that move the needle.
Dimension 01 · By product or item
Which products carry the margin and which sell well but barely clear their cost. Built on item-level data in QuickBooks, this separates a popular low-margin product from a quiet high-margin one — and often explains why revenue is up while profit isn’t.
Dimension 02 · By service line
For service businesses, which offerings actually pay. A line can look busy and still lose money once the real labor behind it is counted. Breaking profit down by service line shows where to raise rates, where to streamline, and where the work isn’t worth taking.
Dimension 03 · By customer
The few customers earning most of the margin versus the many who barely cover the cost of serving them — the discounts, the rush jobs, the hand-holding. Customer-level profitability is often the most surprising view, and the one that reshapes how you price and prioritize.
Dimension 04 · By project or job
True job profitability: revenue against the real labor, materials, and allocated cost of a specific job — not an estimate. Built on QuickBooks projects and cost coding, this is the core view for contractors, agencies, and any work that’s quoted and delivered as discrete jobs.
Dimension 05 · By location or department
For multi-location or multi-department operations, which sites or teams earn their keep and which are subsidized by the rest. Built on QuickBooks classes or location tracking, it turns a consolidated number into a per-unit picture you can manage.
The measures · The margins that read across all of them
Across every dimension, the same measures apply: gross margin shows whether the core work is priced right; contribution margin shows what each additional sale or job adds toward fixed costs; net margin carries everything through to the bottom line. Reading the right measure for the question is half the analysis.
How we analyze your profitability.
Five steps, in order. The first two are about the data — because the analysis is only ever as good as the books behind it. We surface and explain; the decisions stay with you.
- 1
Confirm the books can support the analysis
Before any numbers are read, we check that the QuickBooks data is clean enough to trust — that classes, projects, items, and cost coding are used consistently and that reconciliation ties. This starts with a free file review. If the books can’t support the analysis yet, a cleanup comes first; the analysis is only ever as good as the data behind it.
- 2
Set up the tracking the breakdown needs
If the dimensions you care about — product, service line, customer, project, or location — aren’t already tracked in QuickBooks, we configure classes, projects, items, and cost mapping so revenue and cost land where they belong. Without this structure, a profit-by-segment view is a guess; with it, the numbers are real.
- 3
Choose the dimensions and measures that matter
We scope to the few breakdowns that actually move your business — a project shop lives on job profitability; a multi-location retailer on location and product — and pair each with the right measure (gross, net, or contribution margin). Analyzing everything is noise; analyzing the right two or three is signal.
- 4
Build and pressure-test the breakdown
We produce the profitability view by segment, then stress-test it: are direct costs landing in the right place, is overhead allocated sensibly, are the surprising results real or an artifact of how something was coded? The point of pressure-testing is that you can act on the numbers without second-guessing them.
- 5
Explain what it means — the decisions stay yours
We walk you through what the margins say in plain terms, with the assumptions and limits stated, and lay out the options the numbers point to. What we never do is decide for you: whether to raise a price, drop a line, or change a customer relationship is a business judgment that’s yours to make on numbers you can now trust.
Who profitability analysis is for.
Profitable overall but you can’t say why
The bottom line is positive, but you can’t name your most and least profitable products, customers, or jobs. Profitability analysis turns that single number into a map — so growth, pricing, and hiring decisions stop being guesses.
Project- or job-based businesses
Contractors, agencies, trades, and anyone who quotes and delivers discrete jobs. True job profitability — real cost against revenue per job — is the difference between bidding work that earns and bidding work that quietly loses, job after job.
Multi-product, multi-line, or multi-location
Businesses with several products, service lines, customers segments, or locations, where the consolidated profit hides a wide spread underneath. The more parts the business has, the more likely some are subsidizing others — and the more a breakdown is worth.
A QuickBooks ProAdvisor reads the numbers; you make the call.
The analysis is only as good as the books behind it, so the work begins inside QuickBooks: confirming that classes, projects, items, and cost coding are clean enough to trust, fixing what isn’t, and only then breaking profit down by the dimensions that matter to your business. A QuickBooks ProAdvisor holding the Intuit QuickBooks Certification Level 2 does that against a written scope, then sits with you to explain what the margins say — in plain terms, with the assumptions and limits stated. What we never do is decide for you. Whether to raise a price, drop a line, or change a customer relationship is a business judgment that’s yours to make; our job is to make sure you’re making it on numbers you can trust. Independent firm — advisory work, not a regulated or assurance service, and not Intuit.
What people ask about profitability analysis.
Is this an audit or assurance service?
No. Profitability analysis is independent advisory work — it surfaces and interprets the numbers in your own books. It is not an audit, a review engagement, or any form of attestation or assurance, and it does not certify your financials to a third party.
How is it different from the profit-and-loss QuickBooks already gives me?
A profit-and-loss tells you whether the business made money overall; profitability analysis tells you where. The same total profit can hide a healthy product or service line carrying a money-losing one, or a few customers earning the margin while the rest barely cover their cost to serve. The breakdown is what makes the number actionable.
What does it need from my QuickBooks file?
Clean, consistent data — properly used classes, projects, items, and cost coding, with reconciliation that ties. The analysis is only as good as the books behind it, so we start with a free file review. If the dimensions you care about aren’t tracked yet, we set up the structure; if the books are behind, a cleanup comes first.
What if my books aren’t clean enough?
Then we say so, and the analysis waits. Running a profitability breakdown on messy data produces confident-looking numbers you can’t trust, which is worse than no analysis. We’d scope a cleanup first — typically $1,200–$15,000+ depending on how far behind the books are — then build the analysis on data that holds up.
Will you tell me what to do — like which product to drop?
We’ll show you what the numbers say and lay out the options they point to, in plain terms with the assumptions stated. But the decision — raising a price, dropping a line, changing a customer relationship — is a business judgment that stays yours. We advise; we don’t decide. That’s the line between advisory work and running your business for you.
Is this useful for a project- or job-based business?
Especially. True job profitability — real labor, materials, and allocated cost against revenue, per job — is the core view for contractors, agencies, and trades. It depends on job costing being set up properly first, so if the project-level numbers aren’t trustworthy yet, we start there before the analysis.
How much does it cost?
We start with a free file review to confirm the books can support the analysis and to scope the work. A focused profitability analysis is one fixed fee, scoped in writing; if a bookkeeping cleanup is needed first, that runs $1,200–$15,000+ depending on how far behind the books are. You get a written scope and published pricing before any work begins — independent firm. To confirm your books can support the analysis, call a ProAdvisor at (877) 751-5575.
Find out which parts of the business actually make money.
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