Free KnownShift utility
FreeKnow your margin. Understand what could change it.
Turn a few project financial inputs into a decision-ready view of margin, commercial headroom, target exposure, pricing guardrails and recovery options.
Free to use. No sign-in required. Your commercial inputs stay in your browser.
Project margin calculator
Free to use. No sign-in required. Your project financial inputs are processed in your browser and are not saved by KnownShift.
Project
Used only to label the screen and your downloads.
Project
Formatting only. No conversion is applied.
Project economics
These three numbers produce the complete core analysis.
Project economics
Expected project revenue after agreed commercial discounts and excluding GST, VAT, sales tax or similar pass-through taxes.
The delivery cost directly attributable to executing the project.
Use your organization's commercial target. There is no universal ideal margin.
More commercial detail
Your project commercial position
Enter planned revenue, direct project cost and target margin to generate the commercial analysis. Nothing is calculated until those three are present.
Margin intelligence
More than a margin %
A margin percentage tells you where a project is. KnownShift Margin Intelligence works out how far it can move before the answer changes, and what it would take to correct it.
- Current economics
- Revenue, direct cost, gross profit, gross margin and markup, held apart rather than conflated.
- Target position
- Where the project sits against your own target, in percentage points and in money.
- Commercial headroom
- How much cost the project can absorb, and how much revenue it could lose, before the target is reached.
- Pricing guardrails
- The minimum revenue and the maximum cost the target permits at today's figures.
- Break-even protection
- How far the position can move before gross profit reaches zero.
- Sensitivity
- A five by five view of what revenue and cost movements do to the margin.
- Stress
- Preset commercial movements, and the first one that would breach the target.
- Recovery options
- Three exact routes back to target: price, cost, and a balanced correction.
- Professional outputs
- A management-ready brief and a working commercial model, both free.
Who this is for
Built for people who answer for the commercial position
Anyone who has to explain a project's margin, defend a price or find a correction before the next review.
Project Managers
Answering for the commercial position of the work they run.
Delivery Managers
Protecting margin while the plan moves underneath them.
Account Managers
Pricing a change before agreeing to it.
Engagement Managers
Holding a target across a portfolio of engagements.
PMO Leaders
Standardising how margin is assessed across projects.
Commercial and Finance Partners
Checking the arithmetic behind a delivery claim.
Common use cases
- Project financial review
- Fixed-price proposal review
- Margin protection
- Pricing discussion
- Cost-overrun assessment
- Scope-change impact
- Project recovery
- Commercial approval preparation
- What-if analysis
Methodology
How KnownShift analyzes project margin
The analysis moves from basic project economics into target guardrails, downside exposure and the corrections available when a target is missed.
- Economics
- Target
- Protection
- Sensitivity
- Action
Transparent calculations. Commercial judgment remains with you.
Core economics
Commercial guardrails
Decision intelligence
Commercial principles
- Margin is measured against revenue. Markup is measured against cost.
- The target is your organisation's, not an industry benchmark.
- Headroom is a limit, never a recommendation to spend it.
- Contribution margin is shown beside gross margin, never instead of it.
- The utility supports commercial judgment rather than replacing it.
Utility FAQ
Questions about this utility
Short, practical explanations of the commercial definitions behind the analysis and how to use the results.
Three inputs produce the full core analysis. The optional detail only adds sections, it never changes the margin arithmetic.
Margin basics
Commercial decisions
Need to connect commercial planning with delivery planning?
KnownShift PM OS connects requirements, approved backlog, estimation, execution planning, commercial modelling and professional project artifacts into one governed delivery workflow.