Customer profitability review
Shows which customers generate contribution and which make a loss after allocated costs. A ranked view helps focus management attention on relationships that erode profitability.
— Finance & Investment
Cost-to-serve & margin leakage by customer
Joins revenue to allocated cost per customer, derives true contribution margin, and names the loss-makers with the price rise each needs to reach your target margin.
- Finance & Investment
- Traceable reasoning
- Runs anywhere
2–3 weeks → ~40 minutes
For a full population, not a sample
No coding required
- Input
- Customer revenue data with consistent customer identifiers
- Output
- Contribution margin analysis by customer and, where available, by product
- Runs in
- Skillsize · ChatGPT · Claude · Copilot
- Export
- SKILL.md · MCP
- Time saved
- ~2–3 weeks per run
— USE CASES
What people use Cost-to-serve & margin leakage by customer for
Account renegotiation planning
Produces a shortlist of accounts for renegotiation, with the price increase each needs to reach the target margin at current volumes and allocated costs.
Product mix margin review
Examines contribution margin at customer-product level where the data supports it. Highlights likely leakage from pricing, product mix, discount creep or service intensity to support more focused commercial recommendations.
Cost-to-serve commercial assessment
Makes the margin impact of allocated service costs visible across customer relationships. Helps distinguish accounts that need pricing attention from those that warrant a review of service demands.
What it works from
- Customer revenue data with consistent customer identifiers
- Allocated cost data by customer or customer-product combination
- Product identifiers for product-level analysis
- Target contribution margin
What you get back
- Contribution margin analysis by customer and, where available, by product
- Ranked loss-making customer and product combinations
- Assessment of likely margin leakage causes
- Customer renegotiation shortlist with supporting margin evidence linking accounts to the commercial opportunity for improvement at the target margin under current cost allocations and volumes
— HOW IT BEHAVES
How Cost-to-serve & margin leakage by customer produces its result
The mechanics behind this specific template — what it reads, what it calculates, and where a human stays in the loop.
Every row of the reporting period in scope
Each row of your export is processed on the same basis, so no line item is skipped however long the table is.
The pattern charted
Movement across the reporting period in scope is visualised from the computed data, so the trend is legible at a glance.
Composed as work product
Findings on the reporting period in scope are written up as a document that reads like professional output, with each claim tied back to a line item.
Each line item enriched in place
Derived columns are added row by row, keeping your source data and the judgement about each line item side by side.
Roll-up alongside line item-level detail
Detail rows are summarised into the grouped view of the reporting period in scope without losing the underlying line items.
Why this is expensive by hand
Customer revenue can hide unprofitable relationships when discounts, product mix and service demands absorb the margin. In practice it shows up as customer profitability review: shows which customers generate contribution and which make a loss after allocated costs. A ranked view helps focus management attention on relationships that erode profitability. The value sits in the rigour, not the typing — yet the rigour is exactly what gets traded away when there is only 2–3 weeks of capacity for it.
How this Skill produces it
As a Skill, the work is already sequenced. You bring the evidence, and the run produces contribution margin analysis by customer and, where available, by product plus ranked loss-making customer and product combinations. The criteria, ordering and review points that make the answer trustworthy are encoded in the Skill itself — which is the difference between a structured method and a prompt someone pastes in. Net effect: 2–3 weeks down to ~40 minutes, no drift between runs, and every conclusion traceable back to the evidence behind it.
Who it's for
- Finance directors and FP&A teams
- Investment, deal and corporate development teams
- Controllers and reporting managers
- Consultants building or reviewing business cases
Run it in Skillsize — or export it anywhere
Cost-to-serve & margin leakage by customer exports as a structured SKILL.md file and is MCP-ready, so the same method runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or your own AI products. Adapt it to your methodology, and the intelligence stays yours — not locked to one vendor.
ChatGPTClaudeCopilotAI Products (MCP)
Related Skill Templates
More Finance & Investment templates →Finance & Investment
Data Room to IC Memo
Turns a target’s data room materials into a source-cited Investment Committee memo, reconciling financial evidence and assessing deal risks to support a clear investment recommendation.
Finance & Investment
Financial Health Diagnostic
Computes period-on-period movement across a financial summary and reconciles profitability, liquidity, leverage, cash generation and working capital into a triaged read on strengths, risks and priority actions.
Finance & Investment
Budget consolidation
Rolls stacked department budget submissions up by cost centre and department, compares the total to your envelope, and writes the consolidation note with credible trims.
Finance & Investment
Credit / Loan Underwriting
Assesses a credit application against your own credit policy and returns a governed underwriting decision — approve, refer or decline — showing how affordability, risk and policy thresholds drove the outcome, and holding it for a credit officer sign-off before any letter is issued.
Finance & Investment
Profitability Analysis
Computes gross profit and margin by product, customer, unit or geography, isolates loss-making and sub-scale lines, and explains where value leaks through discounting, cost-to-serve, mix or small orders.
Finance & Investment
Investment Potential Analysis
Scores a public company's fundamentals alongside live market signals and research for near-term momentum, medium-term trajectory and long-term durability, reconciling all three into one investment-potential verdict.