In Float, you can track budget utilization and profitability to ensure you’re meeting financial goals throughout the project lifecycle.
Profitability in Float connects three core elements:
Your schedule (planned and logged work)
Your rates (bill rates and cost rates)
Your project budgets
By combining these, Float links resource planning directly to financial performance.
How profitability works in Float
Float considers:
Cost rates — what it costs you to deliver the work
Bill rates — what you charge clients
Project budgets — how much time or money is allocated
Project expenses (if any) — project-specific, non-labor costs like travel, equipment, or stock assets.
to provide a real-time view of project performance based on scheduled or logged work.
At a high level:
Costs are calculated using cost rates and expenses (if any). Expenses always increase the total project cost, whether they’re billable or non-billable. Cost rates can be set at the role or person level.
Costs = (cost rates × hours worked) + total expense costs
Fees are calculated using bill rates and billable expenses (if any). Only expenses marked as billable contribute to the billable value. If your project uses the Time & materials budget type, markup can be applied to billable expenses. Markup increases the billable value but does not increase cost.
Bill rates can be set at the role, person, project, or phase level.
Fees = (bill rates × hours worked) + billable expenses (+ markup, if applicable)
Budgets determine how much money or time is available
Margin % shows how profitable your project is.
Profit is the monetary amount earned, while margin is the percentage of revenue that remains as profit. Margin's calculation depends on the project’s budget type.
Expenses - affect margin in the following ways:
Billable expenses (no markup) - Increase both cost and billable value equally → Neutral margin impact.
Billable expenses with markup (for the Time & materials budgets only) - Increase billable value more than cost → Improve margin.
Non-billable expenses - Increase cost only → Reduce margin.
Profitability in Float is designed for project-level planning and performance analysis. It supports forecasting and monitoring but does not replace accounting systems.
You can review profitability in:
Project view's overview bar — for a real-time snapshot during planning
Single Project Report — for a detailed breakdown of billable values, costs, and margin
Budget types and their impact on profitability
Each project’s budget type determines how margin and utilization are calculated. Budgets are configured in the Budget tab of each project.
There are three main budget types:
Time & materials
Best for: ongoing or variable-scope projects.
The budget amount is not set - the billable is calculated dynamically from billable hours × bill rates, and billable expenses and markups (if any)
Budget utilization is not calculated
Margin adjusts in real time as hours are scheduled or logged
Fixed fee
Best for: defined-scope projects with agreed pricing.You set a fixed total amount (by project, phase, or task)
Costs and fees increase as hours are scheduled or logged
Margin can be calculated based on the total budget or based on the total billable.
Fixed hours
Best for: capacity-limited engagements or internal workYou set a total number of hours (by project, phase, or task)
Billable hours burn the budget. Non-billable allocations do not count toward utilization.
Float calculates the scheduled hours and shows the remaining budget
You can check the cost of the scheduled work
Margin is not calculated