Do you manage a Contract Book? Maybe you’re a Contract Recruiter, Divisional Manager or Contractor Care Specialist, and you’d like better visibility over your Contract Book. If that’s the case, I have some suggestions beyond the ‘Contractors Finishing’ metric that could be really useful when managing your contract book.

Managing your Contract Book with cube19 Trends

Let’s begin with cube19 Trends  (if you don’t see this in the header menu when you access cube19, please ask your internal cube19 admin to grant you permission).

Managing your contract book

Managing your contract book

Results like these are typical. In the space of 1 month, with some Finishers (pink) and only a few Starters (blue) booked in, the Contractor numbers will drop from 131 to 115!

For assignments that are coming to an end, you have a valuable asset at your disposal – a contractor not yet on the market who will be seeking a new project. Hopefully, they’ve had a good experience working with you, and are happy for you to represent them again. Now is a great opportunity to proactively approach potential clients who you know will need contractors with this skills set. 

Trends also allows you to visualise your Contract GP. There is a metric specifically built to do this: ‘Contractors Out in period Weekly GP’. 

When plotted on a chart, and with the data aggregated weekly, this shows the projected GP each week and can be used to look both historically and ahead. This is a projected figure based on contracts in the CRM when you plot the chart, so as new Starters are booked, their GP will be added from their start date, and of course, Finishers’ GP is removed when their contract is set to end.

As you likely experience in your own business, the Projected GP is rarely spot on. In most cases, the actual GP tends to be lower than the projected due to Contractors taking holiday and other (unchargeable) time off. This is where the Actuals functionality comes in, which allows accurate GP based on timesheet submissions to be uploaded into cube19.

Actuals will be covered in more detail separately, but an example of how to use this in Trends is to plot the Actuals metric against your Projected GP. The results might look something like this:

Managing your contract book

There is a strong correlation between projected and actual, with the latter hovering around 68% of the former, with a few dips which could be explained by public holidays in countries where you have a large project, or multiple contractors taking time off. 

Knowing that your actual margin will likely be 32% less than your projected allows you to better anticipate your future billings.

If you have any questions about this, please contact the Customer Success team at support@cube19.com or speak to your Customer Success Manager directly.