Utilization says busy. Margin says otherwise.
The scenario:
Everyone is flat out. Nobody has capacity for the new client. And somehow the month-end number is thinner than it should be.
Busy and profitable are different measurements. The gap between them is usually three things: unbilled scope creep, fixed-fee clients whose usage doubled, and internal work nobody prices.
The three usual leaks are worth naming. Scope creep: the client added a site and the agreement never noticed. Fixed-fee drift: usage doubled, the fee did not. And internal work: the migrations, the tooling changes, and the documentation hours billed to nobody. None of them announce themselves. All of them compound monthly.
The prompt:
You are running a utilization-versus-margin analysis for an MSP.
Context: [team size, billing model mix, last quarter’s rough hours and revenue by client if available]
Build:
The per-client view: hours consumed against revenue, ranked by effective hourly rate
The bottom-five review: for each, whether the fix is a price correction, a scope reset, a service change, or an exit
The scope-creep detector: the three recurring work types we deliver but never priced, and what each costs monthly
The correction plan: which conversation happens first, with the script