4 Studio Designer Reports Designers Use to Maximize Profitability

Do you know how your design firm is making money? While core reporting functions (like Balance Sheets and Income Statements) can give a broad view of your performance, designers need detailed financial reports to get deep insights into their business. Created specifically for interior designers, Studio Designer’s accounting system provides exceptional reporting capabilities that make it easy to get a close view of your firm’s profitability across client, item, vendor, and more.

ALSO READ: Accounting Software for Interior Designers: 5 Reasons Designers Need a Purpose-Built Solution

In this article, we’ll explore four exclusive Studio Designer reports that 15,000+ designers use to better understand their businesses and gain insights that help increase their profitability.

1. Client Profit Report  

The Client Profit report allows designers to take a close look at one project and view all income (broken out by furniture, accessories, time billing), expenses (broken out by cost of goods, administrative expenses), and net profit and loss. The Client Profit report provides designers with a comprehensive look at the profitability of each project. 

With this information, you can: 

• Understand your profit margins by different income streams, such as time billing and markup on product. For example, if your margins on time billing appear to be vastly lower, you may consider raising your rates.  
  
• Compare multiple Client Profit Reports to determine which types of projects are more profitable and should be taken on more frequently.

2. Project Worksheet – Sales Code 

The Sales Code Project Worksheet allows you to see profit margins across all your sales codes: furniture, antiques, fabric, accessories, labor, and more. With this report, you can pinpoint what types of products have consistently high margins.

With this information, you can:

• See where you might need to increase your mark-up to increase profits. 
  
  For example, if a designer views her Sales Code Project Worksheet and realizes she had a low profit margin on fabric, she can increase her markup on future projects to boost profitability. 
   
• Identify areas with consistently high margins. If you know you’ve consistently made money with accessories, you can consider proposing more accessories to clients. And you can go deeper by seeing which accessory vendors are the most profitable to work with.  

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3. Project Worksheet – Vendor 

Who you work with matters. Studio Designer’s Vendor Project Worksheet offers insights into your spending patterns and margins to help you identify opportunities to maximize profitability and explore new avenues for growth.

With this information, you can: 

• Make smarter, data-driven sourcing decisions. Always know which vendors can be your go-to partners.  
   
• Understand which of your smaller vendors deliver strong profit margins. While you may know that you do a lot of business with large retailers, this worksheet can help you identify profitable vendors who you may not think about on a regular basis – but should! 

 
For example, you need to order a sectional for a client project. You’re choosing between two options, both are equal in terms of pricing for the client, design, and quality, but after looking at a Vendor Project Worksheet, you can see that you’ve been able to achieve better pricing from one vendor, because of your experience and relationship. You choose to go with this less expensive vendor and earn a larger fee on the product. 

4. Project Worksheet – Room  

Studio Designer’s Room Project Worksheet breaks down your project by room, giving you insights into every item in each room. This detailed report allows you unparalleled transparency into your labor and products for a client.  

With this information, you can:

• Identify rooms that are particularly profitable. From this information, you can tailor your client presentations to showcase your design skills for those rooms.  
   
• Discover individual products have higher profit margins and prioritize promoting and using those items. 
   
  Alternatively, you can identify products with low profitability and explore ways to either reduce their costs or replace them with better preforming alternatives. 

How are Studio Designer reports so easy to generate and access?

Studio Designer makes detailed and quick reporting possible with an easy-to-use way of classifying goods as designers add them to the system. Income and expenses are recorded on the project level and broken down into specific types e.g., furniture, fabric, wall coverings, accessories, labor, freight.

When it’s time to generate reports, there is no need to retroactively assign a classification to your items or worry that funds have been applied to the wrong client – all this information already exists in your Studio Designer software. 

Can I get these reports from other places? 

In generic accounting systems, income and expenses often arrive as unspecific lump sums. This means generic accounting platforms may offer basic reporting options; however, detailed financial reports that break down expenses and income by category are available only with additional manual labor or software workarounds.

ALSO READ: Studio Designer vs. QuickBooks for Interior Designers: Finding the Right Fit for Your Firm’s Accounting

Studio Designer reports are unique. Studio Designer’s accounting platform is custom-built for interior designers, and its classification system allows designers to generate easily accessible, highly detailed reporting. 

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