26Point Checklist

The framework · Customers & Growth

11 Pricing & Commercial Model

10 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time5.0/10Financial9.6/10Automation7.2/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

11.1

Pricing strategy

Time4/10Financial10/10Automation7/10
What this is
How prices are set — by cost, by competitor, or by the value delivered.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten financially. Price is the fastest lever on profit in any business: a few points of price flow almost entirely to the bottom line, where a few points of volume do not.
You have a problem here if
Your prices were set by looking at a competitor, and have moved only with inflation since.
What to automate
The strategy is a judgement call. Automate what informs it: cost per unit delivered, margin by job, competitor price monitoring, and win rate at each price point. Most owners under-price because they have never seen these together.
11.2

Cost understanding

Time6/10Financial10/10Automation8/10
What this is
Knowing what it truly costs to deliver — including labour, rework, admin and the owner's own time.
Why it matters
You cannot price what you cannot cost. Underpriced work usually comes from undercounted cost, not from generosity.
You have a problem here if
Your cost per job excludes the owner's hours.
What to automate
High automation potential. Time capture, materials, subcontract and overhead allocation flowing automatically into a per-job cost. Approximate and automatic beats precise and annual.
11.3

Gross margin

Time5/10Financial10/10Automation8/10
What this is
What is left after the direct cost of delivering — in total and per line of business.
Why it matters
Gross margin is the engine's efficiency. It determines how much you can spend to acquire a customer, and therefore whether you can grow at all.
You have a problem here if
You track revenue monthly and margin yearly.
What to automate
Automate monthly gross margin reporting by product, service and segment straight from the accounting system, with an alert when it moves outside a normal band.
11.4

Profitability by product/service

Time6/10Financial10/10Automation9/10
What this is
Which specific offerings make money and which quietly do not.
Why it matters
Almost every multi-service business has at least one offering that loses money and is retained out of habit. Finding it is usually worth more than a marketing campaign.
You have a problem here if
You have never ranked your offerings by profit contribution.
What to automate
Very high automation potential. Tag revenue and cost by offering at source, then produce contribution reporting automatically. The analysis is trivial once the tagging exists — the tagging is the work.
11.5

Discounting

Time5/10Financial10/10Automation8/10
What this is
When and how much you discount, and what it costs across the year.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten financially. Discounting is invisible cost: rarely tracked, individually small, and collectively often larger than the annual profit.
You have a problem here if
Discounts are given at the salesperson's discretion and never totalled.
What to automate
Enforce approval thresholds in the quoting system and report total discount given by person, segment and month. Simply making the number visible usually reduces it.
11.6

Packaging/bundling

Time4/10Financial9/10Automation6/10
What this is
How offerings are combined and presented as choices.
Why it matters
Packaging changes what customers buy without changing what you deliver. A good-better-best structure reliably lifts average order value and reduces price-only comparison.
You have a problem here if
You present a single price and the customer's only options are yes and no.
What to automate
Automate the mechanics — configurable quoting, package-level pricing rules — and measure take-up per package so the structure can be tuned. The package design itself is a commercial decision.
11.7

Revenue model

Time4/10Financial10/10Automation5/10
What this is
How the business earns: one-off sales, retainers, subscriptions, usage, licensing, or a mix.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten financially, because the revenue model sets the ceiling on valuation, predictability and cash stability more than performance does.
You have a problem here if
Every month starts from zero.
What to automate
Low automation potential — this is a design decision. Software supports it afterwards: subscription billing, usage metering, renewal management. Do not let billing-tool limitations decide your revenue model for you.
11.8

Recurring versus transactional revenue

Time4/10Financial9/10Automation5/10
What this is
The proportion of revenue that repeats without being re-sold.
Why it matters
Recurring revenue reduces the sales burden, smooths cash flow and multiplies enterprise value. Even a modest recurring layer changes how the business feels to run.
You have a problem here if
None of your revenue is contracted beyond the current job.
What to automate
Report the recurring/transactional split automatically and track it as a headline metric. The conversion of one-off work into ongoing arrangements is a commercial redesign, not an automation.
11.9

Customer lifetime economics

Time6/10Financial9/10Automation9/10
What this is
What a customer is worth over the whole relationship, against what they cost to win and serve.
Why it matters
The number that governs how aggressively you can grow. It is also the correct denominator for almost every marketing decision.
You have a problem here if
Acquisition spend is judged against first-purchase value only.
What to automate
Very high automation potential: lifetime value by segment and cohort, computed from transaction history and refreshed monthly, alongside acquisition cost from the marketing data.
11.10

Contract/commercial terms

Time6/10Financial9/10Automation7/10
What this is
The terms you trade on — payment schedules, scope boundaries, variations, cancellation, liability.
Why it matters
Terms decide who carries risk and when you get paid. Weak terms turn profitable work into a cash-flow problem and a dispute.
You have a problem here if
Scope changes are absorbed rather than charged.
What to automate
Standardise terms in generated contracts, automate variation and change-order workflow, and track scope creep by job. Automation cannot draft your commercial position, but it can stop it being quietly given away.

Category totals

Time 50/100 · Financial 96/100 · Automation 72/100. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.