The board trusts the top line. Help them trust the margin.
The close lands on time, the numbers reconcile, and still no one can say which customers and products actually make money. We turn the data you already have into a board-ready profit map by customer, product and channel, defensible to the last figure, and built so your finance team owns it long after the first pack.
A margin map that survives scrutiny
Profit by customer, product and channel on a true cost-to-serve basis. Concentration made visible, the loss-making tail named, the pricing pressure-tested. The pack stops averaging the answer away, and the conversation moves from one blended number to the decisions that actually move it.
Every figure traces back
The method is Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing: each number ties to an activity, a time and a rate. It stands up to the board, the lenders and the auditors, because there is nothing to take on faith. No black box, no allocation hand-waving, just a line you can follow from the order to the margin.
ONE P&L, OPENED INTO THE LAYERS A BOARD ACTUALLY MANAGES
Illustrative. Net sales descend through gross, operational, commercial and company margin, each step a cost with a named owner. The board stops debating one blended figure and starts managing the layer that moves it.
A profit that closes on time still won't tell you which half of the business earned it.
That is the gap we close. The statutory P&L and a blended margin cannot show which customers and products carry the result and which quietly erode it, because the cost of serving them sits in overhead, averaged away. A cost-to-serve model opens it up: board-ready, defensible, and built so your team keeps running it long after the first pack.
Common questions
- How is this different from what our finance team already reports?
- Your reporting shows revenue and gross margin accurately, then stops at the gross-margin line. We push operating cost, fulfilment, service, returns, the cost of small and special orders, down to the customer, product and order, so you see the margin the P&L averages away.
- Is the margin number defensible to the board and auditors?
- Yes. The method is Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing, formalised by Kaplan and Anderson in Harvard Business Review in 2004. Every figure traces back to an activity, a time and a rate, so it holds up in front of the committee and the audit. There is no black box.
- Do we need to change the ERP or add headcount?
- No. We build from the exports you already produce and the model sits alongside your close. Your existing finance team owns and updates it; there is no migration and nothing to buy.
- How fast do we get a first board-ready view?
- A full ProfitAudit 360 lands a board-ready profit map in three to five weeks. If you want a read before committing, the free Profit Check takes 10 minutes with no data upload.
Bring the board a margin number that holds.
Book a CFO briefing. Free, straight to a partner, no slide deck.
- Reply
- Within one working day
- Who answers
- A partner, not a bot
- Commitment
- None
Proof
A distributor in New Zealand. €1.335M of cost-to-serve made visible, then halved, and 830 loss-making customers brought down to 295.
Read the case study →Who you would be talking to
Miguel Guimarães, Founding Partner
Cost and profitability practitioner for 25+ years. Presented the Damco cost-to-serve case at Managing for Profit (Amsterdam RAI, December 2009), on the same programme as Robert S. Kaplan.
Call +351 910 313 731
