Partner and subcontractor margins
When a partner supplies the person doing the work, only part of the bill rate is yours. The partner employs and pays them, and you keep a commission cut. StaffMargin tracks that commission in the same margin views as your own staff, so subcontracted work shows its real margin instead of living in a side spreadsheet. This is a feature of the Growth and Pro plans.
What a partner is
Section titled “What a partner is”A partner is a firm that supplies people you bill a client for, a subcontractor or a staffing partner. You record the partner once with its name, country, and contact details, then link the people it supplies to it.
The key difference from your own team: the partner employs and pays the person. Their salary is never yours to manage, so StaffMargin does not hold one.
Subcontracted staff: a commission, not a salary
Section titled “Subcontracted staff: a commission, not a salary”You add a partner-supplied person as an employee, then set their supplying partner. That marks them as external. Because the partner pays them, the salary step is skipped, and they carry no salary cost in StaffMargin.
What you keep instead is a commission: the share of the bill rate that stays with you after the partner’s cut. You set that percent on each project assignment, so the same person can carry different commissions on different projects.
How the commission becomes margin
Section titled “How the commission becomes margin”StaffMargin computes a subcontractor’s revenue exactly as it would for your own staff, then keeps your slice of it.
First it works out the full bill rate for the assignment, with the same rules as everyone else: the rate type, the billable days after public holidays, and the engagement fraction. Then it keeps your commission of that figure.
recognised revenue = full bill rate × commission percent
The rest of the bill rate is the partner’s, and you never see it inflate your numbers. Because the person has no salary, their cost starts at zero, so the margin is the commission you recognised, less any costs you choose to allocate to them.
subcontractor margin = recognised commission − allocated costs
An own employee, with no supplying partner, keeps 100 percent of the bill rate and carries their salary employer cost as usual. The two sit side by side, each calculated honestly.
Where partner margin shows up
Section titled “Where partner margin shows up”A subcontracted person appears in the employee margin table like anyone else, with their commission as the revenue and their margin alongside. That margin flows up into the project and client it belongs to, so a project staffed partly by your own people and partly by a partner’s shows one accurate margin.
You can still allocate shared costs to a subcontractor, and the dashboard reports them in your one reporting currency like everything else.
A worked example
Section titled “A worked example”A partner supplies a developer you bill a client at €5,000 a month, and you keep a 20 percent commission.
- The full computed revenue for the assignment is €5,000.
- You recognise your commission: 5,000 × 20 percent = €1,000.
- The developer has no salary in StaffMargin, so their cost is €0.
- Margin: 1,000 − 0 = €1,000, unless you allocate a cost to them.
The other €4,000 is the partner’s and never touches your revenue or margin. If you later allocate a €100 tool to the developer, their margin becomes €900.