Client Profitability Tracker, Profit Per Client Spreadsheet, Excel Google Sheets Template for Freelancers

Revenue and profit are not the same thing, and neither one tells you where your time actually went. This spreadsheet adds a third number: your effective hourly rate per client, once you count the hours you actually spent and the direct costs you paid out. A client with your biggest invoice can still be your worst hourly rate, and this is built to catch exactly that. Formulas do the adding up.

WHAT YOU GET (4 connected tabs)

START HERE: A one-page walkthrough of the whole workbook (what to fill in, what to leave alone, and exactly how to clear the example data when you're ready).

SETTINGS: Your business name, currency symbol, standard hourly rate, and healthy margin threshold, entered once. Clients and Summary read their values from this sheet; nothing is hardcoded anywhere else. Change your standard rate and every flag on Summary follows automatically.

CLIENTS: One row per client for the period you're reviewing: revenue, hours spent, and direct costs (subcontractors, software bought just for them, materials). Profit, effective hourly rate, and margin percentage all calculate themselves the moment you fill in the three numbers. 30 rows ready for your entries. Add one client's totals together into a single row rather than splitting them across an invoice-by-invoice log.

SUMMARY: A complete overview with nothing to type. Total revenue, total direct costs, total profit, and your overall effective rate across every client. A single line names whichever client currently has the lowest effective rate compared to your standard rate, so you know exactly who to look at first. Underneath, a full client-by-client breakdown flags every client as Healthy, Below target rate, Below healthy margin, Below rate and margin, or missing data, all as a formula.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Open Settings and fill in your business name, currency symbol, standard hourly rate and healthy margin threshold (once).
2. Go to Clients, add a row for each client covering the period you're reviewing: revenue, hours spent, and direct costs. Profit, effective rate and margin calculate themselves.
3. Check Summary any time. Profit per client, effective hourly rate per client, and exactly which clients sit below your target rate or your healthy margin threshold. All formulas, nothing to type.

WHAT YOU NEED

Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets with no macros, no add-ins, and no other software required. Colored cells are the only ones you ever touch; white cells are formulas. Nothing in this workbook is locked or password-protected, so you're always free to inspect or adjust a formula if you want to.

A note on Google Sheets: every formula in this workbook was checked individually and uses only functions Google Sheets also supports. No XLOOKUP, no dynamic arrays, nothing Excel-only. Upload it to Drive and open it with Google Sheets, not in Drive's preview window: the preview doesn't calculate, so a working file looks broken there. I build and test in Excel, so I won't promise you a pixel-perfect Sheets import.

WHAT THIS ISN'T

Not accounting software, not tax advice, and not a time tracker. This spreadsheet does its own arithmetic on the totals you give it for revenue, hours and direct costs over a period; it doesn't log individual time entries, doesn't connect to your invoicing or timesheet software, and doesn't verify that the hours you enter match what you actually billed. The margin and rate thresholds are a starting point for your own judgment, not a guarantee about which clients to keep or drop. Not a subscription. One file, yours to keep, with no login and no recurring fee.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD

You get one .xlsx file, delivered immediately after purchase with no waiting for an email. It arrives pre-filled with six realistic example clients, including one with the highest revenue in the group but one of the worst effective hourly rates, so you can see exactly what this tool catches before you change anything. Start Here tells you exactly which rows to clear first and which to leave alone. Before release, all 343 formulas were recalculated in Excel and checked cell by cell; zero error values anywhere in the workbook. Need something more (invoicing, expense tracking, a live dashboard)? Those live in the Small Business Finance Kit in this shop; it pairs well with this tracker but does not include it. Questions before you buy? Send a message; I'm happy to help you work out whether this fits how you actually run things.