A practical self-assessment for professional services teams. Understand where your delivery visibility gaps are, what they're costing you, and which metrics to focus on first.
Takes around 5 minutes. No login required.
Professional services firms that can see delivery clearly — utilisation rates, budget burn, project health, profitability — consistently outperform those that can't. They overrun less, bill more accurately, resource more efficiently and present better data to clients and leadership.
This health check will show you exactly where your team stands across four pillars: delivery visibility, utilisation, profitability and reporting efficiency.
Score yourself 1 point for each “yes”. Total up at the end.
Pillar 1
Can you see, in real time, how much of each project's budget has been consumed?
Do project managers get automatic alerts when a project is approaching its budget limit?
Can you identify which projects are at risk of overrunning before the client notices?
Pillar 2
Do you know each engineer's utilisation rate (billable hours / available hours) week by week?
Can you see who is overloaded and who has spare capacity on the same screen?
Is time-off factored into your resource planning automatically?
Pillar 3
Can you calculate true project margin (revenue minus delivery cost) without a spreadsheet?
Do you know which of your projects were profitable last quarter — and by how much?
Are billing rates connected to your time tracking so profitability is calculated automatically?
Pillar 4
Can you generate a client billing summary without manually compiling time data?
Does your leadership team have a single-page view of organisational performance?
Can you produce a resource utilisation report in under 60 seconds?
Your delivery visibility is in good shape. Focus on refining and optimising your existing reporting.
You have some data, but gaps are likely costing you in overruns, inefficiency or reporting effort.
Significant delivery visibility gaps. Profitability and utilisation decisions are likely based on instinct rather than data.
If you can answer these four questions at any point in time, you have baseline delivery visibility.
Formula
Billable hours ÷ Available hours × 100
Target
70–80%
Why it matters
Below 60% means wasted capacity. Above 85% consistently means burnout risk.
Formula
Hours logged ÷ Total budget hours × 100
Target
<80% at project midpoint
Why it matters
If you're above 80% at 50% of the project timeline, escalate immediately.
Formula
(Revenue – Delivery cost) ÷ Revenue × 100
Target
30–50% for most agencies
Why it matters
Below 20% means delivery costs are eating most of your revenue.
Formula
Minutes to produce a monthly utilisation report
Target
<5 minutes
Why it matters
If it takes hours, data capture is broken — not just reporting.
Hourglass gives you all four metrics — utilisation, budget burn, project margin, and instant reports — out of the box, from day one. Free plan available.