The financial shape of your industry is not generic

What actually differs by industry

Vendors present industry fit as a list of modules, which is the least useful framing available. What genuinely differs is the shape of the money — which line items sit between revenue and margin, which of them originate outside the accounting system, and which number the leadership team argues about.

• Professional services. Loaded labour cost, write-offs, and percentage-of-completion revenue. Four of the six deductions between fee revenue and margin start outside the ledger.
• Agencies. Pass-through media distorting every ratio, plus retainer erosion that has no moment of reckoning until renewal.
• Software and SaaS. ASC 606 and deferred revenue, and a cost-of-revenue definition problem that overstates gross margin by ten to twenty points in most companies.
• Distribution. Landed cost, inventory valuation method, and the gap between gross margin on the invoice and margin after freight, duty, and shrink.
• Construction. Retainage, work in progress, over- and under-billing, and percentage-of-completion under a different standard than services.
• MSPs. Recurring contracts against variable labour, plus hardware pass-through that behaves like agency media.

How these guides are written

Each one comes from live engagements in that industry, and each carries a margin waterfall and a benchmark table drawn from our own customer set rather than from published research. Sample sizes are dozens, not thousands, and we say so on the page — a benchmark from forty firms is useful and should not be presented as if it came from four thousand.

We also state, on every guide, where we are the wrong answer. Heavy manufacturing, warehouse management, and deep international statutory obligations are consistent cases where another system fits better, and saying it on the industry page saves everyone a month.