As of 13 August 2026, AI can calculate your service profit margin.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

5 minutesto a draft.

30 minutesto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ityou

What the alternative costsNo priced human or software alternative is supplied in the available tool data.

If this goes wrong, you set prices using a margin that excludes important delivery or overhead costs and make less profit than expected.

What to actually do

Hand it to a person
The route this page recommends
A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.
Use a tool built for this
Second choice

Do it yourself

The distant third

A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

How to actually do it

Open your bookkeeping system, invoices and bank records for the period you want to measure, and export or copy the relevant revenue and cost figures.
Group the figures into revenue, refunds, direct delivery costs, staff or subcontractor costs, shared overheads and owner time without putting the same cost in two groups.
Decide whether the calculation should use invoiced revenue or cash received, and note whether VAT is included in any figure.
Paste the figures and the supplied prompt into a chatbot, then ask it to calculate the margin and list every assumption or missing figure.
Compare the result and formulas against your accounting records and current price list, change any disputed allocation assumptions, and save the verified calculation with its period and source figures.

Prompt

Calculate my service profit margin from the figures below. Use pounds sterling and show every formula and intermediate figure. First separate revenue from VAT and other amounts that are not income, then separate direct delivery costs, shared overheads and owner or staff time. Calculate the margin using the agreed figures, but do not silently decide how to allocate shared costs or value unpaid time. Where an assumption is needed, show at least two reasonable options and explain how each changes the result. Report revenue, total direct costs, allocated overheads, total cost, profit and profit margin as percentages. Also calculate a break-even price or utilisation view only if the supplied figures support it. Flag missing, duplicated or inconsistent figures instead of guessing. Finish with a short list of figures I must verify against my accounts or bookkeeping records. Do not give tax, accounting or legal advice, and do not invent any figures.

Business and period: [describe the service and period]
Revenue received or invoiced, excluding VAT where applicable: [paste figures]
Refunds, discounts or credits: [paste figures]
Direct subcontractor or freelancer costs: [paste figures]
Materials, software or other costs directly linked to delivery: [paste figures]
Staff delivery costs: [paste figures]
Shared overheads: [paste figures]
Owner time or unpaid delivery time, with hours and chosen hourly value: [paste figures]
Other costs to include: [paste figures]
Allocation method for shared costs, if already chosen: [describe it]
Any figures that are estimates rather than actuals: [identify them]

Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

AI cannot decide whether your chosen allocation of rent, software, management time or other shared overheads reflects how the business actually operates.
AI cannot know whether your figures are complete, duplicated or posted to the right accounts unless you check them against your records.
AI cannot choose a defensible value for unpaid owner time without your decision about the work and its opportunity cost.
AI cannot tell you whether the resulting margin is commercially sufficient for your market, capacity and risk.

Even on a YES, the friction has a name: judgement under ambiguity, verification cost and stakes of error.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

Axis	Score (0–2)
Output	2
Inputs	1
Verification	1
Liability	2
Effort delta	2
Total	8 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can AI calculate my service profit margin?: Yes, if you provide the revenue and cost figures, AI can calculate the arithmetic and show the working. You still need to check the figures and decide how shared overheads and unpaid time should be treated.
What costs should I include in my service profit margin?: Include revenue and refunds, then separate costs directly linked to delivery from shared overheads such as premises, software and administration. Decide separately whether staff costs and your own delivery time belong in the measure, and state that decision clearly.
Can AI calculate my profit margin from my accounts?: It can analyse figures you export or paste from your accounts, but it cannot confirm that your bookkeeping is complete or correctly classified. Remove unnecessary personal and customer information before sharing records with an AI tool.
Is an AI-calculated profit margin accurate?: The arithmetic can be accurate while the margin is still misleading if the inputs or cost allocation are wrong. Reconcile the output to your accounting records and compare more than one reasonable allocation method before using it to set prices.

Nearby answers

All Pricing rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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