Controlling software for service providers
In projectfacts the figures for your controlling are created where your team books hours, runs projects and writes invoices. So you can see whether a project is making money in the current week, not only at the quarterly close.
Enquire nowWhat is controlling software?
Controlling software analyses a company's times, costs and revenue so that management can steer by them: spotting variances early, comparing projects and customers, checking prices. In projectfacts, controlling is not a separate system alongside day-to-day business but the analysis across all modules. Project times, invoices, documents, sales opportunities and tickets sit in the same data pool that the reports read.
The Controlling module offers ready-made reports on finance, projects, employees, sales and tickets. They all work the same way: choose filters and period, sort by column, click through to the data behind a figure, print or export to Excel. Since release 2026.3, full cost accounting with cost centres, allocations and contribution margin II is part of it as well.
Three questions decide the result
Margin
Is this project making money? projectfacts continuously calculates the contribution margin per project and per customer from booked times, internal cost rates, documents and costs.
Utilisation
How much of the available time could be sold? The reports separate billable from non-billable hours, per employee, category and period.
Pricing
Are we achieving the rates we calculated with? Project and customer analysis show the average revenue per hour, the post-calculation shows the extra or shortfall in revenue per order.
Why all three
A fully booked team is not yet a good margin
A service provider sells the time and skills of its people. An hour nobody pays for cannot be put into stock. That is why controlling for service providers looks at margin, utilisation and price, not at unit costs.
An example: at a consultancy every consultant is booked until the end of the quarter. Utilisation looks good, yet less is left over at month end than expected. The reason is not in any utilisation list: two fixed-price projects are running over budget, and a major customer pays a rate below the average. Anyone who sees only one of the three levers can easily pull the wrong one. In projectfacts all three are based on the same data.
- Project analysis sorts projects by contribution margin, with the loss-makers at the bottom
- Customer analysis shows contribution margin and average revenue per hour for each customer
- Area/category analysis separates billable from non-billable time
Every key figure has its report
The figures are created where the work is done
Many service providers 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 meeting. Accounting, project management and management then discuss three different sets of figures.
In projectfacts, controlling is the analysis across all modules. Project times come from time recording, invoices and incoming invoices from invoicing, plan and budget from project management, sales opportunities from the CRM and tickets from the ticket system. Nobody transfers anything, and no interface needs maintaining.
One adjusting screw lies outside the reports: the internal cost rate per employee. You store it with a validity period in the personnel area. Only with it does a booked hour become a cost amount, and a later salary adjustment does not change the months already past.
What belongs to controlling in projectfacts
Cost accounting
Cost type, cost centre and cost object on every time, every document and every posting, plus allocations and contribution margin II.
Project controlling
Plan/actual comparison, contribution margin analysis and warnings for the individual project.
Earned value analysis
Read from the earned value whether a project stays within its time and cost frame.
Sales planning
Sales opportunities and forecast, so that utilisation for the coming months becomes visible.
Commission billing
Commissions on revenue or gross profit, calculated from the same order and invoice data.
Power BI
Analyse key figures from projectfacts graphically in dashboards of your own.
Cost accounting
Every posting knows what it was incurred for
Behind the contribution margin is cost accounting. Every project time, every cost element, every document item and every posting gets three details: what kind of cost it is, where in the company it arose and for which project. A rule pre-fills them on entry, so your team books as usual.
This creates two views of the same euros. The contribution margin asks what a project or customer leaves over. The cost centre asks what a department costs and where it stands against its plan in the current year.
Financial accounting stays with the tax adviser. Invoices and documents go across via the DATEV interface, and controlling in projectfacts is the steering view alongside.
Which controlling software suits you?
The two are not mutually exclusive. If you already work with planning software, you pass the project and customer figures from projectfacts on to it via Excel export or the REST API.
Bring your monthly report along
Show us the spreadsheet someone puts together by hand every month. In the conversation you will see which report in projectfacts delivers it, what needs to be set up for it and where the limits are.
Enquire nowA controlling month in five steps
This is how the monthly discussion of the figures can run in projectfacts, from a complete set of bookings to the decision.
1. Close the bookings
All hours for the month are booked and approved. Documents and incoming invoices have been checked and carry cost type, cost centre and cost object.
2. Sort projects by contribution margin
Project analysis puts the loss-makers at the bottom. One click on a project shows the hours and costs behind the figure.
3. Post-calculate completed orders
Post-calculation places what was incurred and what was billed next to every order. Anyone who sees a revenue shortfall there will cost the next quote of this kind differently.
4. Hold cost centres against the plan
The “Plan & analysis” tab of every cost centre shows plan, actual and variance, per month and since the start of the year.
5. Look ahead and decide
Future revenue shows what will come from orders and payment plans, the sales opportunity analysis what sales is building up. Then the decision is made, for example to replan a project or raise a change request.
The reports are predefined, not freely modelled
The reports in Controlling are predefined. Within a report you choose columns, period, breakdown and filters and save the result as a bookmark. projectfacts does not include a designer in which you click together your own data models and dashboards as in a BI tool. If you want to go further, there are four routes:
Excel export
Every report can be printed and exported to Excel. You define fixed reports for Excel or PDF via the CSV and Excel export.
Power BI
For monthly comparisons, trends over time and dashboards of your own, you analyse key figures from projectfacts in Power BI.
REST API
Via the open REST API you pull data into a tool of your own or into existing planning software.
AI and MCP server
Since release 2026.3 an AI can assess a report on request, using your own AI access. You ask questions about your figures in your own words via the MCP server, always with exactly your permissions.
Which figure are you missing today?
Tell us how you steer your company today and which question remains open. We will show you where projectfacts delivers the answer from your own bookings.
Enquire nowStill have questions? We have the right answer!
Give us a call, send us an e-mail or take a look at our FAQ section! We will be happy to answer your questions!