Reporting for Staffing Built Around People Billing Today, Not Placements Last Month

Almost every staffing firm reports placements this month. It is the number the recruiting floor is incentivised on, and it is a poor measure of the business, because it counts arrivals and ignores departures. Twelve placements in a month where fourteen assignments ended is a shrinking business reporting a good result. The reports below are arranged around what is actually billing and what is about to stop.

Deployed headcount by client, role and location

People billing today, compared with the same figure four weeks ago. It decides where account management attention goes. A bad number is flat headcount alongside a strong placement count, which means you are replacing attrition and calling it growth. This one report reframes most staffing reviews within a month of being introduced.

Gross margin per deployed head

Contribution per person by client and role family, not total billing. It decides which rate cards get revised and which accounts deserve more delivery capacity. A bad number is your largest account by headcount sitting at the bottom of the margin table, which is common and rarely visible in a revenue ranking.

Extension and roll-off ageing

Assignments ending within sixty days, with client, rate and confirmation status. It decides this week's account calls. A bad number is a cluster of unconfirmed end dates inside thirty days, because at that point an extension is no longer a renewal conversation and a redeployment has to be found from a standing start.

Ninety day replacement rate

The share of placements replaced within their first three months, by client and recruiter. It decides screening standards and which clients need a franker conversation about the role brief. A bad number concentrated in one client usually says the job on paper is not the job in the building.

Client concentration

The share of deployed headcount, billing and margin sitting with the top three accounts. It decides business development priorities and how nervous the finance team should be. A bad number rarely appears suddenly; it accumulates across two good years, which is exactly why it needs a standing place in the weekly pack.

Deployed headcount. It is available from records you already keep, it corrects the most misleading habit in staffing reporting, and it makes every other report easier to interpret. Margin per head is second, and it takes slightly more work because rate and cost per assignment have to be recorded consistently, but it is the report that changes commercial behaviour most.

Every report here should produce a named action. Reports that only produce commentary should be retired.

An assignment record per deployed person with start date, end date, client, role family, bill rate and cost rate. Requirements logged with the date the client raised them rather than the date a recruiter noticed them. One owner per client. A closed list of reasons for replacements and drop offs. Redeployment status kept current for anyone rolling off. This is modest discipline, but without it margin and cycle time reports will be argued with rather than acted on.

Profiles sent per recruiter is the classic example: it goes up the moment you stop screening properly. Interviews scheduled has the same flaw. Monthly placement counts without headcount and replacements beside them encourage filling any seat with anyone available. If a report can be improved by working less carefully, it is not a performance report, and putting it on a wall makes the business worse rather than better.

It will not collect timesheets, run payroll, calculate statutory contributions or raise client invoices, and it does not try to. Those stay in the payroll and accounting systems that hold your compliance record. This is the commercial and delivery picture on top of them.

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