Revenue tells you how busy you are. Margin tells you whether it was worth it. The two are not the same, and confusing them is one of the most common ways professional services firms leave money on the table — or quietly bleed it.
Cannelle now ships with two dedicated margin reports. Both live under Performance in the Invoices flyout menu. Both work on the same principle: they compare what you invoiced against what the work cost you, and show you the difference — in absolute terms and as a percentage.
One report breaks this down per project. The other rolls it up per client. Together they give you a complete picture of where your profitability actually comes from.
The Invoiced Project Margins report shows one row per project, for any date range you choose. It defaults to the current calendar year, but you can set any from/to date and hit Search to refresh.
Each row links directly to the client record and the project, so you can jump straight from a number that surprises you to the underlying detail.
The invoice date — or the date of the most recent invoice if the project has more than one.
The client name, linked to their record so you can open the full client view in one click.
The project code, linked to the project record.
The invoice reference if the project has a single invoice; the number of invoices if there are several.
The billing currency for that project.
The total amount billed to the client for this project.
The total costs recorded against this project — resource fees, subcontractors, and any other cost lines.
Invoiced minus costs. A positive number means the project was profitable; negative means it was not.
Margin expressed as a percentage of the invoiced amount. This is your real profitability indicator.
A totals row at the bottom of the table sums invoiced, costs, and margin across the entire period, and recalculates the overall margin percentage. Every column header is clickable — click once to sort ascending, again to sort descending.
// good to know
The report only includes projects that have at least one sent invoice. Projects still in progress or with draft invoices do not appear — the numbers shown reflect actual billed work.
The Invoiced Client Margins report zooms out one level. Instead of one row per project, it shows one row per client — with all their projects and invoices combined into a single summary line.
This is the report to reach for when you want to compare clients side by side, or when a director asks "which clients are actually making us money?" The date range works the same way: defaults to the current year, fully adjustable.
The client name, linked to their full record.
The total number of invoices issued to this client within the selected period.
The total amount billed across all projects for this client.
The total costs across all their projects.
Total invoiced minus total costs for this client.
Overall margin percentage across all their work in the period.
As with the project margins report, a totals row summarises the full picture, and every column is sortable. Sorting by margin percentage descending immediately surfaces your most and least profitable clients.
// a useful exercise
Sort by invoiced descending, then compare that order to sorting by margin percentage descending. If the rankings look very different, you have clients who generate a lot of revenue but relatively little profit — a useful thing to know before you decide where to focus your sales effort.
Both reports use the same colour coding on the margin percentage column to help you spot issues at a glance — no need to read every number carefully.
50% or above
Healthy margin. The project or client is contributing well to the business.
Between 0% and 50%
Profitable but potentially thin. Worth understanding why the margin is below your typical target.
Below 0%
Loss-making. The work cost more than you billed. This always warrants investigation.
// the margin formula
Margin = invoiced − costs. Margin % = (margin ÷ invoiced) × 100. Simple arithmetic, but surprisingly revealing when you can see it across every project or client in one table.
Both reports have an Export to Excel button in
the top-right corner of the table. Clicking it downloads a formatted .xlsx file with all the visible rows, the totals row, and the margin
percentage formatted as a proper percentage column — ready to drop into a
financial review or share with a stakeholder who does not have access to Cannelle.
The file is named automatically with the date range you selected, so invoiced_project_margins_2026-01-01_2026-12-31.xlsx is what you get
for a full-year project margins export. No renaming needed.
Both reports require invoices read permission, so they are available to anyone on your team who can view invoicing data. That said, each report has a natural primary audience.
// project margins
Project managers & operations
If you are responsible for delivering work profitably, this is your report. Use it to review completed projects, spot where costs ran over, and identify the types of work that consistently deliver strong margins — versus the ones that consistently disappoint.
// client margins
Account managers, sales & directors
If you are deciding where to invest your sales effort, or reviewing the value of your client portfolio, this is your report. A client who generates a lot of revenue but thin margins may be worth less than a smaller client whose work is consistently profitable.
// company owners & directors
Use both together
Start with client margins for the high-level view — which clients are driving the business forward. Then switch to project margins to understand the detail behind any client that looks unexpectedly good or bad. The two reports answer different questions and are most powerful when used together.
// one more thing
Both reports are available in the live demo. Log in at demo.cannelle.io and go to Reports → Project Margins or Reports → Client Margins to see them with real-looking sample data. How to access the demo →