Financials & P&L

VERA calculates revenue, cost, and margin live from time entries, rate history, and project metadata. No manual spreadsheet formulas needed on the operational side — the data flows automatically to the reporting sheet.

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Revenue by project type

Revenue recognition depends on the project type.

Pro Bono

Revenue = $0

Always. Hours are tracked for cost purposes only.

T&M (Time & Materials)

Revenue = hours_logged × billing_rate

Accrues per entry. Work should stop when hours_budget is exhausted — logging beyond that point earns no additional revenue and runs at pure cost.

Fixed Price

Revenue = (hours_logged ÷ hours_budget) × contract_value
         capped at contract_value (100%)

Revenue accrues as a percentage of completion. Logging 50% of the budgeted hours recognises 50% of the contract value. When the hours budget is used up, 100% of the contract value has been recognised.

Retainer

Revenue is the fixed monthly retainer fee — this is not calculated per-entry. Instead, VERA tracks burn rate: whether the agency is delivering the contracted hours and therefore earning the fee. See Retainers.

Agile (Sprint-based)

Revenue per sprint = (hours_logged ÷ hours_budget) × contract_value
                     capped at contract_value
                     when sprint status = 'active'

Sprints with status = 'planned' recognise $0 — work has not started. Once activated, revenue accrues the same way as Fixed Price but per-sprint.

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Cost calculation

Cost = what the agency pays to deliver the work.

Standard calculation:

Cost = hours_logged × hourly_cost

Where hourly_cost is the rate effective on the entry's date, looked up from Rate History.

Vendor with liability:

Cost = liability.agreed_amount  (overrides hours × rate entirely)

If a liability exists for vendor X on project Y, the liability's agreed_amount becomes the cost for that vendor on that project — regardless of how many hours are logged. The two methods are never mixed for the same vendor/project pair.

Rate History lookup

Rate History is append-only and effective-date versioned. When calculating cost for an entry dated 2026-01-15:

Look up 13. Rate History WHERE user_id = X
Find MAX(effective_from) WHERE effective_from ≤ 2026-01-15
Use that row's hourly_cost

This means a salary increase on 2026-03-01 affects costs from that date forward, but leaves all historical entries unchanged.

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Margin

Margin = Revenue − Cost
Margin % = Margin ÷ Revenue × 100

Shown as:

• Dollar amount to Owners
• Percentage only to Managers

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The billing_rate vs. hourly_cost distinction

These are two different rates that are easy to confuse:

	billing_rate	hourly_cost
What it is	What you charge the client	What the agency pays the team member
Used for	Revenue calculation	Cost calculation
Where	22. Projects Master	13. Rate History
Who sees it	Owner	Owner only
Typical values	$125–$200/hr	$50–$120/hr

The gap between them is the gross margin per hour.

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Financial access by role

Data	Owner	Manager	User
Revenue ($)	✅	❌	❌
Cost ($)	✅	❌	❌
Margin ($)	✅	❌	❌
Contract value	✅	❌	❌
Billing rate	✅	❌	❌
Hourly cost (rates)	✅	❌	❌
Budget % used	✅	✅	❌
Hours logged	✅	✅ (assigned projects)	✅ (own only)

Managers see percentages, not dollars. Users see their own hours only.

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Monthly report

generate_monthly_report produces a portfolio view for the current (or specified) month:

• Per-project: hours logged, budget hours, utilisation %, burn status
• Revenue at risk: projects over budget
• Open unresolved items count
• Summary: over budget count, under-utilised count

Available to Owners (with dollar amounts) and Managers (with percentages, own projects only).

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Variance

Variance appears in two contexts:

Hour variance (from 22. Projects Master formula columns):

hour_variance = estimated_hours − actual_hours

Positive = under budget. Negative = over budget.

Cost variance:

cost_variance = estimated_cost − actual_labor_cost

Variance %:

variance_pct = cost_variance ÷ contract_value

These formula columns (I–O in Projects Master) are user-maintained — VERA writes the source data (cols A–H) but the variance calculations are Google Sheets formulas set up in the reporting sheet.

Further reading

• The Data Is Only Worth Protecting If It's Worth Something — why financial visibility is role-gated, and what each role actually needs to see