We don't have an opinion about your margins.
We build the instrument that measures them. Time-driven models, your own financial data, one reconciled number per customer, order and channel. Then we teach your team to run it, so the answer keeps arriving after we leave.
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When the average stops being enough, bring in the capability.
Two front doors into the work, plus a way in by role. Both start from the data you already export.
TDABC in three paragraphs
TDABC starts from a simple observation: most indirect cost is really time. Every order keyed in, every pallet picked, every dispute handled consumes minutes of people and machines. Rather than spreading those costs pro rata to revenue, TDABC measures the time each transaction actually consumes, using time equations: a base time, plus increments for every driver of complexity.
The second ingredient is the capacity cost rate: the fully loaded cost of a team or a resource, divided by its practical capacity, meaning the time genuinely available to work. Minutes multiplied by rate: every order, every delivery, every customer receives a cost that reflects its real complexity, and unused capacity becomes visible instead of being buried in unit costs.
The result is a P&L by customer and by product, reconciled to the accounts, that you can defend in front of a board. That is the number that lets you draw the whale curve and decide: repricing, minimum order size, channel change, renegotiation.
From diagnostic to embedded model in four stages.
A structured diagnostic that scores your organisation across seven profit dimensions. No data upload. You receive a personalised report with the areas of highest latent margin.
We take your general ledger and transactional data and build a full TDABC model. You get a whale curve, customer-level P&L, and a clear map of where margin leaks.
We deploy CostCtrl with your data, train your team, and embed the model into your monthly management cycle. You own the model. We transfer the knowledge.
Quarterly reviews, model updates, pricing strategy support, and scenario analysis. We stay as long as you need a sparring partner for profitability decisions.
Your Profit Check takes 10 minutes. The insight lasts a career.
No data upload. No sales call. Just 14 questions across seven dimensions and a personalised profitability report.
Methodology is the brain. CostCtrl is the machine.
CostCtrl is the SaaS platform purpose-built for TDABC profitability modelling. It ingests your ERP data, runs time equations, and outputs customer-level and product-level P&Ls in minutes, not months. AI accelerates the model build and the reading of results, while every number stays traceable to its source, so the output is fast and still defensible in front of a board.
- Upload financial and operational data or CSV, model runs in minutes
- Whale curve, treemap, heatmap dashboards
- AI-assisted model build with every number traceable to source
AI builds cost models fast. Proving they are right is the hard part.
An AI cost model can be ready in hours instead of weeks. It can also assign costs to the wrong place, and a wrong allocation tells you to grow the customer that is losing you money. We use 25+ years in cost and profitability to build these models with AI and, just as important, to check that the result holds up.
A €1.335M cost-to-serve problem, made visible, then halved.
A New Zealand industrial distributor with 1,951 customers found that 830 of them were contributing negatively once true cost-to-serve was attributed: a combined €1.335M. With the model in hand, the team re-priced loss-making combinations and reset service terms. The negative cohort has roughly halved, to around €665K, with loss-making customers down from 830 to 295.
Read the full case study →Four kinds of leader call us. All are done guessing.
For Private Equity
You acquired a platform company. The management pack says 14% EBITDA. But which portfolio companies, which BUs, which customers are actually creating that margin? We show you, in weeks.
- Portfolio-wide profitability benchmarking
- Due-diligence cost model for add-ons
- Post-acquisition margin improvement roadmap
For SMEs
You have 500+ SKUs, dozens of customers, and a gut feeling that some orders lose money. Your ERP gives you revenue per customer, but not cost-to-serve. We close that gap.
- Customer and product-level P&L
- Pricing strategy grounded in real cost data
- A model your finance team can update monthly
For CFOs
The month-end close is on time, and still nobody can say which customers and products make money. We turn your existing data into a board-ready profit map, defensible to the last figure.
- Profit by customer, product and channel
- A number your board and auditor can defend
- Owned by your team, in weeks
For Controllers
You can run the model. You just need the method and a working cost model wired to your data. We transfer TDABC and a maintainable cost-to-serve model your team owns, with no system change.
- TDABC method, transferred to your team
- A cost-to-serve model wired to your data
- Maintainable in-house, no system change
Field notes on cost truth.
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02 Sep 2026Founded by practitioners, not theorists.
Cost & Profitability Consulting was founded in 2010 with one mission: bring world-class cost management to companies that need it most. The founder brings 25+ years in cost and profitability. Since 2010 the firm has delivered 150+ TDABC engagements, and built a profitability platform because nothing on the market worked the way it should.
Meet the team
Frequently asked questions
Do you work with companies outside Portugal?
Yes. We work from Porto, Portugal, with companies across Europe and beyond, in English, remotely or on site depending on the engagement. More than 150 engagements since 2010 have taught us to work well with distributed teams.
Where do we start if we do not know our profitability by customer?
With the Profit Check: a free 10-minute diagnostic, with no data transfer, that estimates your cost-to-serve exposure and tells you whether a TDABC pilot makes sense for you.
Do we need to change ERP or buy software to start?
No. The first model runs on the exports your team already knows how to produce: invoicing, orders, deliveries, payroll and the general ledger. Specialist software such as CostCtrl only comes in if you want to run the model on a recurring basis.
How much does an engagement cost?
We work to a closed scope and a fixed price per phase, on quotation. The pilot amount is agreed before we start, and the expected return is discussed openly in the proposal.
Workshops & training · the fastest path
Bring the method into the room. Or onto the call.
A focused workshop is the quickest way to turn cost & profitability into decisions your team will act on, and historically our fastest route from first contact to a real project. Public or in-company, in person or online, on the topic you choose.
- Public or in-company
- In person or online
- Small groups
- Any cost & profitability topic
No open date in your region? The call is where we design one, public or just for your team. If you would rather work through it alone, the online TDABC course is the same method, self-paced.
ONE
Cost, Profitability & Artificial Intelligence
Four stages in one day: the TDABC method, hands-on cases, the model built in software, and the results read with AI.
The shape of the day
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