Written by Nils R. | Jul 17, 2021 7:00:00 AM
What is
Monthly Billing Trends by Consultant Report
? Monthly Billing Trend Reports are considered revenue and performance analysis tools and are used by Consulting Managers and Executives to look at multi-year billing trends, seasonality and budget variances. Some of the main functionality in this type of report is that it it can be run for any period and will dynamically display monthly data for the past five years as well as current year budget. All consultants with billings in any of the months will display down the rows, with a Total, Total Last Year, Budget, as well as Variances. There is a chart on the right side (not visible in the screenshot below) that shows the total billings for each consultant, and the chart at the bottom shows the total billings per month. Notice the tabs at the bottom of the report where Weekly Utilization is another report produced in the same report pack to allow for drill down to the current week. You find an example of this type of report below.
Purpose of
Monthly Billing Trend Reports Professional Services organizations use Monthly Billing Trend Reports to give services leaders a clear picture of monthly and annual fluctuations in billings both in total and down to the individual consultant level. When used as part of good business practices in PMO and Consulting departments, a company can improve its tactics related to utilization and billing analysis, and it can reduce the chances that managers don't, as early as possible, notice important trends.
Example of a
Monthly Billing Trend Report Here is an example of a Monthly Billing Trend Report with revenue by consultant as well as multiple years of historical data. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of a Monthly Billing Trends by Consultant Report for Professional Services Companies[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Report
? The typical users of this type of report are: Service Leaders, Project Managers, Consultants.
Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with
Monthly Billing Trend Reports Progressive PMO and Consulting departments sometimes use several different Monthly Billing Trend Reports, along with consultant billing reports, billing revenue dashboards, project dashboards, detailed project and summary reports, revenue forecast models, annual budget models and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
