“We placed more people than last year and made less money.”
Gross margin looks healthy at the pay-to-charge spread and thins considerably once employment cost, rebates and the time from timesheet to cash are included.
pay-to-charge
gross margin per placement
rebate
contractor book
DSO
fill rate
time to submit
Your words, not ours.
Where it concentrates here
Five places the money tends to
go in staffing and recruitment. Each one is concentrated — a single agreement, a single queue,
a single account nobody reviews — which is why sampling walks straight past them.
Contractor margin eroded by employment cost that was modeled once and never updated.
Rebates and refunds on early leavers recurring with particular clients or consultants, unexamined.
Timesheet-to-invoice delay extending DSO for reasons entirely internal.
Job board and sourcing spend renewed annually with no view of placements generated per channel.
Contract extensions rolling on at original rates while the cost to serve has risen.
Not every staffing and recruitment is the same business
Contract and temp staffingBill rate and pay rate set per placement, with the spread eroded by burden that was estimated once and never trued up.
Permanent placementFee revenue with a fallback guarantee, where the fallback rate by recruiter and by client is rarely calculated.
Statement-of-work and managed servicesPriced as a deliverable, staffed as a contract, and margin measured as though it were the latter.
Healthcare and travel staffingCredentialling, housing and per-diem stipends, where an IRS-compliant stipend and a convenient one are different amounts.
Vendor-managed and MSP programsRates capped by a program, with the supplier absorbing every burden increase for the life of the agreement.
Where this data actually lives
Bullhorn for the front office; JobDiva or Avionté in higher-volume shops
A separate back office — Avionté, TempWorks or an outsourced payroll bureau — that rarely reconciles cleanly to the ATS
WOTC and ACA tracking, very often with a third party nobody has reviewed
Certificates of insurance and client contract terms in a shared drive rather than a register
Named because it changes what the intake asks for. An extract from one of these has known gaps, and the review is built around them rather than surprised by them.
Reported in your numbers, not ours
gross margin per placement
spread
burden rate
fill rate
time to fill
fallback rate
redeployment rate
days sales outstanding
The obligations that set the deadlines
ACA applicable large employer reporting — 1094-C and 1095-C — across a variable-hour workforce
Multi-state payroll tax registration and unemployment experience rating
Workers' compensation classification codes and the annual audit
I-9 and E-Verify records, and worker classification for anyone paid on 1099
State-level staffing agency licensing where it applies
What the review would ask you for
7 requests written for staffing and recruitment
and asked of nobody else — 2 of them core. They sit alongside
the operating spine every business has — finance, revenue, receivables,
payables, contracts, people, IT, operations, risk, commercial and governance
— which is 107 further requests.
Placements by client, sector and consultant CorePermanent and contract.
Gross margin per placement and per contractor CorePay rate against charge rate, after employment cost.
Days to invoice and days to collectTimesheet to cash.
Rebates and refunds on early leaversFrequency and cost.
Job board, advertising and sourcing spendAgainst placements generated.
Worker classification and right-to-work compliance
Anything you do not have can be skipped in one
click, with a reason. The intake is completed in the
client portal, which saves each answer as it is given and can be
returned to as often as you like.
When this stops being interesting and becomes urgent
A workers' compensation audit that reclassified codes and produced a bill
A client demanding an unprofitable rate at renewal, with no cost model to argue from
A misclassification claim, or a state audit of 1099 contractors
An acquisition approach, where spread by client becomes a diligence question
Losing a large account and discovering how much overhead it was carrying
Has been asking for it: The controller, who cannot currently prove which accounts earn
Who commissions it
Finance directors, operations leads and MDs. Phase one is priced before phase two is
discussed, the report is yours either way, and we take no vendor commissions or referral
fees on anything we recommend.
The proposal sets out the sequence week by
week, what we would need from you, and what it costs for your number of operating
units. No call required to see the number.
Closest to this
Operations that share more with staffing and recruitment than the sector label
suggests.