FAQ: The Financial Summary & Margins (The "Big Formulas")

Total Fees: This is the sum of all resource fees plus any billable "Other Costs" (like software licenses) and travel expenses, if you have enabled them to impact the total.

Net Fees: This is the actual amount you will charge the client. It is calculated as:

Total Fees - Total Discount + (Billable Other Fees) + (Billable Travel & Expenses).

Total Costs: This represents what the project costs your company to deliver.

For Fixed Fee projects: It includes uplifted service costs and any non-billable internal expenses.

For T&M projects: It simply totals the base service costs and any additional internal costs.

The ultimate goal of these calculations is to determine the Average Sales Margin (ASM), which tells you how profitable the deal is.

The ASM Formula: 1 - (Total Cost / (Total Fees - Total Discount)).

Discount Models: Depending on your settings, discounts are calculated in different ways:

Timeline Level: You apply a discount to the whole project; the system then calculates the Discount Amount as (List Price - Adjusted Rate) x Total Hours.

Resource Level: You apply discounts to specific people. The calculation is (List Price x Discount %) x Total Hours.

Both Levels: The Total Discount is simply the sum of the individual resource discounts plus the overall project-level discount.

Third-Party Costs (Adding Margin)

When you add a vendor or third-party service, QuoteX lets you manage your own profit on that item. You enter what it costs you in the 'Total Costs' cell and what you want to charge the client in the 'Total Fees' cell; the system then retains that difference as your margin.