Appearance
Realisation Reports
See how much of the standard value of your billed time you actually invoiced - by team, by person, and by project.
Overview
Realisation answers a simple question: when we billed our time, how much of its full value did we actually charge? If a team billed time worth €10,000 at standard rates but invoiced €8,500 for it, their realisation is 85% and the €1,500 difference is the write-down.
hidma has two Standard Reports for this:
| Report | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Realisation Rate | Realisation per team, expandable to each person in the team |
| Detailed Realisation (Billing) | Realisation for each person on each project |
Both reports show the same figures and are calculated the same way - see How Realisation Is Calculated.
Running the Reports
- Navigate to Reports in the left sidebar
- Open the Reports tab
- Select Realisation Rate or Detailed Realisation (Billing) from the report dropdown
- Set your filters (see each report below)
Both reports can be exported to CSV or Excel.
Understanding the Figures
For each row, both reports show:
| Figure | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Recorded hours | All hours recorded in the period |
| Billed hours | Hours that have been billed on an invoiced bill |
| Unbilled hours | Hours recorded but not yet billed |
| Standard value | What the billed time is worth at standard rates |
| Amount billed | What was actually invoiced for that time |
| Write-down | The difference between the standard value and the amount billed |
| Realisation % | The amount billed divided by the standard value |
| Billed hrs (at cost rate) | Billed time that was valued at cost rate because it had no charge-out rate |
| Billed hrs (no rate) | Billed time with no rate at all, which is left out of the percentage |
The last two columns are explained in How Realisation Is Calculated.
Realisation Rate
The Realisation Rate report shows realisation by team. Each team appears as a row with its totals, and expanding a team reveals each person in it. You can also switch the view to list users directly, without the team grouping.
Filters:
- Date Range - the period in which the time was worked
- Teams - focus on particular teams
- Users - narrow to specific people
Use this report to compare teams and spot the people whose write-downs are driving a team's result.
Detailed Realisation (Billing)
The Detailed Realisation (Billing) report breaks realisation down to each person on each project. By default, each user's projects are grouped under them, or you can list the projects flat.
It shows the same figures as the Realisation Rate report, with extra filters:
- Date Range - the period in which the time was worked
- Teams - focus on particular teams
- Users - narrow to specific people
- Client Types - filter by client classification
- Clients - select specific clients
- Projects - narrow to individual projects
Use this report when you want to know where a write-down happened - which clients and projects a person's time was written down on.
How Realisation Is Calculated
Realisation % = amount billed ÷ standard value of the time billed
- Standard value uses each entry's charge-out rate. Where a time entry has no charge-out rate, its cost rate is used instead. See Charge-Out Rates for how rates are set.
- Watch the Billed hrs (at cost rate) column. It shows how much billed time was valued at cost. When most of a row's time is at cost, the percentage is effectively billed vs cost (recoverability) rather than billed vs charge-out, so it will usually look higher than true realisation.
- Time with no rate at all is shown under Billed hrs (no rate) and left out of the percentage, since it has no value to compare against.
- Team and user totals are worked out from money totals, not by averaging percentages. Larger amounts therefore count for more. A person who wrote down €50 on a €100 job and billed €10,000 in full elsewhere has a realisation close to 100%, not 75%.
- Time is counted in the period it was worked, not the period it was billed.
- Only invoiced bills count. Draft bills are ignored until they are invoiced.
Fix missing rates for accurate figures
If you see time in the at cost rate or no rate columns that should have a charge-out rate, set the rate on the user, team or project. Every report picks up the corrected rate at once. See Missing Rate Indicators.
Recent periods look incomplete
Because time is counted in the period it was worked and only invoiced bills count, a recent period will usually show a lot of unbilled hours. Its realisation is based only on the time billed so far, and will settle once that work has been invoiced.
Common Uses
Spotting write-downs by team - Run Realisation Rate for the last quarter to see which teams are consistently billing below standard value.
Finding where the discount went - When a person's realisation is low, run Detailed Realisation (Billing) filtered to that person to see which clients and projects took the write-downs.
Reviewing a client's pricing - Filter Detailed Realisation (Billing) to a single client to see whether its fees are keeping up with the time spent.
Related
- Reporting & Analytics Overview - all Standard Reports and how to share them
- Billable Utilisation Report - how much of your capacity was billable
- Work in Progress Report - time worked but not yet billed
- Charge-Out Rates - how rates are set