Margin
Is this project making money? teamspace calculates the contribution margin per project and per client continuously, from booked time, internal cost rates, documents and costs.
Controlling software for service firms whose figures arise as work is booked.
Controlling software analyses a company's time, costs and revenue so that management can steer by them. In teamspace those figures come from the same data set your team uses to book hours, run projects and write invoices. So you see whether a project makes money during the week it happens, not at the quarterly close.
What matters
Three questions decide the result.
A professional services firm sells its people's time and expertise. An hour nobody pays for cannot be put into stock. That is why controlling for service firms looks at three levers rather than unit costs.
Utilisation
How much of the available time was billable? The reports separate billable from non-billable hours, per employee, category and period.
Pricing
Are we achieving the rates we calculated? Project and client analysis show the average revenue per hour, and the post-calculation shows the over- or under-recovery per order.
Why all three
A fully booked team is not yet a good margin.
At Bauer KG every consultant is booked until the end of the quarter. Utilisation looks fine, yet less is left at the end of the month than expected. The reason does not appear in any utilisation list: two fixed-price projects are running over budget, and a large client pays a rate below the average.
Anyone who sees only one of the three levers can easily pull the wrong one. In teamspace all three sit on the same data:
- The project analysis sorts projects by contribution margin, with the loss-makers at the bottom.
- The client analysis shows contribution margin and average revenue per hour for each client.
- The area and category analysis separates billable from non-billable time, per employee and month.
One data set
The figures arise where the work is done.
Many service firms have long had their data in one system but analyse it somewhere else: in Excel, at the tax adviser's office or in the quarterly review. Accounting, project management and the directors then discuss three different sets of figures.
In teamspace, controlling is the analysis across all modules. Project hours come from time tracking, invoices and incoming invoices from the invoicing software, plans and budgets from project management, opportunities from the CRM and tickets from the service desk. Nobody transfers anything, and there is no interface to maintain.
One setting sits outside the reports: the internal cost rate per employee. You store it with a validity date in the HR area. Only then does a booked hour become a cost amount, and a later salary change leaves earlier months untouched.
The building blocks
What controlling in teamspace includes.
Four building blocks describe the function itself, two more carry controlling into projects and sales. Each has its own page.
Reporting Ready-made reports on projects, finance, staff, sales and tickets, all with filters, periods, drill-down and Excel export. Cost and performance accounting Cost type, cost centre and cost object on every time entry, document and posting, pre-filled by rule. Contribution margin accounting What a project, a client or a business unit leaves over after its direct costs. Cost centre accounting Where in the firm costs arise, and where a department stands against its plan in the current year. Project controlling Plan, actual and forecast per project and phase, with status lights, earned value and milestone trend. Sales controlling Sales funnel, weighted revenue forecast and client analysis, so that tomorrow's utilisation becomes visible.
Cost accounting
Every posting knows what it was for.
Behind the contribution margin sits cost and performance accounting. Every project time entry, cost item, document line and posting gets three attributes: what kind of cost it is, where in the firm it arose and which project it belongs to. A rule pre-fills them as the entry is made, so your team books exactly as before.
This gives two views of the same money. Contribution margin accounting asks what a project or client leaves over. Cost centre accounting asks what a department costs and how much of its time reaches clients.
Financial accounting stays with your tax adviser. Documents and invoices go across via the DATEV interface; controlling in teamspace is the management view alongside it.
Process and function
How controlling runs each month is shown in the processes.
This page describes what teamspace analyses. How a service firm turns that into a fixed routine is covered on two separate pages. The cost control process runs from approving a document to the plan-versus-actual comparison with status lights. Business steering condenses six processes into a small set of key figures for management.
Both build on the same reports. Firms that work with a monthly spreadsheet today usually start with a single question, such as which clients are profitable, and build from there.
Limits
The reports are predefined, not freely modelled.
teamspace does not include a report designer in which you click together your own data models and dashboards as in a BI tool. The reports are predefined. Within a report you choose columns, period, breakdown and filters, and save the result as a bookmark.
If you need more, there are three routes:
- The Excel export that every report offers in its actions menu.
- The REST API from the enterprise edition, which lets you pull data into a tool of your own. How to build your own dashboard on it with an AI coding assistant is shown on the vibe coding page.
- The MCP server in every edition, through which an AI assistant answers freely worded questions about your figures, with exactly your permissions.
Your figures
Bring your monthly report along.
Show us the spreadsheet someone puts together by hand every month. In the call you will see which teamspace report delivers it, what needs to be set up for it and where the limits are.
Where the figures come from
Three modules supply most of it.
Controlling works with what is recorded in day-to-day business anyway.
Time tracking
Every booked hour is valued at the internal rate and lands as cost on the project.
- project time with category
- billable or not
- internal rate with validity date
Project management
The project is the most common cost object, with plan, budget and contribution margin.
- plan against actual
- contribution margin in the Analysis tab
- status light on deviation
Invoicing software
Outgoing and incoming invoices supply revenue and external costs at line level.
- revenue from invoices
- incoming invoices on the project
- post-calculation per order
First call
Which figure are you missing today?
Tell us what you steer your firm by today and which question remains open. We will show you where teamspace answers it from your own bookings.
Frequently asked questions about controlling software
What is controlling software?
Controlling software analyses a company's time, costs and revenue so that management spots deviations early and can steer. In teamspace, controlling is not a separate island but the analysis across time tracking, projects, invoices, CRM and service desk.
Does teamspace replace a BI tool such as Power BI?
No. teamspace has no freely modelled report designer. The reports are predefined and can be adjusted through columns, period and filters. For further analysis you export to Excel or, from the enterprise edition, pull the data into a tool of your own via the REST API.
Does controlling replace accounting?
No. Financial accounting with balance sheet and tax stays with your tax adviser. teamspace hands over invoices and documents via the DATEV interface and provides the internal management view by project, client and cost centre alongside it.
Why is the contribution margin empty in my reports?
Usually the internal cost rate of the employees is missing. Without it, teamspace cannot convert booked hours into costs. You store it per employee and period in the HR area; after that the project, employee and client analyses calculate in full.
Which editions include controlling?
The reports, cost and performance accounting, cost centre planning and contribution margin analyses are included from the office edition. Sales analyses, the utilisation analyses of capacity planning and the REST API come with enterprise.
Can I analyse my figures with AI?
Yes. Reports have an Analyse with AI entry that reads the report on screen and points out what stands out. For this you connect your own AI access. You ask freely worded questions about your data through the MCP server and an AI assistant. Both are included in every edition; more on the AI in teamspace page.