Solutions Margin Control

Know the margin before you confirm the placement — and prove it at reconciliation.

Smartta forecasts fully loaded margin at the point of placement and reconciles it against the actual, gating anything below the floor before it is confirmed — so a thin or losing placement is a decision, not a discovery.

Contact Sales See the control chain

The governed decision chain: rate → on-costs → forecast → floor → reconciled.

Margin check

Placement #4821

Below floor

✓

Pay rate and on-costs loaded

Award rate, super, and on-costs applied

Pass

Forecast margin thin

Loaded margin below target band

Flag

Below margin floor

Placement priced under the approved floor

Gate

↳

Override recorded

Reason, approver, and floor exception logged

Ready

Placement confirmation

Held until the margin floor is met or an override is authorised.

Held

A thin margin caught at placement is a re-price. Caught at reconciliation, it is a loss already booked.

The problem

Margin is quoted at placement and discovered at reconciliation.

The rate is agreed before the on-costs, penalties, and overtime are fully known. By the time the real margin lands in reconciliation, the placement has already run — and the loss is already booked.

The floor is a guideline, not a gate.

Nothing stops a placement being confirmed below the margin floor — it is noticed when the numbers come back.

Loaded costs arrive late.

Super, penalties, leave loading, and overtime turn a healthy quote into a thin actual, cycle after cycle.

There is no record of the trade-off.

When a low-margin placement is approved for strategic reasons, the reason rarely survives to reconciliation.

The governed chain

Every placement priced against the floor before it is confirmed.

Smartta forecasts loaded margin at placement and runs it through the same pass, flag, or gate boundary before the engagement is confirmed.

✓

Fully loaded forecast

Pay rate, on-costs, penalties, and overtime modelled into the margin at placement.

Margin band checked

The forecast is checked against the target band, with the assumptions recorded.

↳

Override with authority

A floor exception is captured by name, with a mandatory justification and segregation of duties.

Floor gated

A placement below the approved margin floor is blocked until re-priced or authorised.

Most placements clear the floor silently. Your team only sees the ones that don't.

The plan

Three steps to safer workforce decisions.

Map the risk

Identify where decisions move between roster, time, HR, payroll, credentialing, and care systems.

Here: where rate, on-costs, and the margin floor are decided — and where the actual lands.

Control the decision

Configure checks that pass, flag, or gate high-risk workforce decisions before they move downstream.

Here: loaded margin forecast at placement and reconciled at close — gated at the floor.

Prove the outcome

Keep decision evidence ready for payroll review, compliance checks, incident response, and operational governance.

Here: assumptions, floor, reason, approver, and actual — ready for finance and the board.

Evidence

When someone asks why a placement lost money, the answer is already there.

Finance and delivery teams should not reconstruct a placement's margin from the rate card, the roster, and the pay run.

Question Source Result Proof

Was the forecast above floor? Margin model Flag Below target band at placement

Which costs were loaded? On-cost pack Pass Rate, super, penalties recorded

Can the placement confirm? Floor gate Gate Held until re-priced

Who approved the exception? Evidence ledger Ready Approver, timestamp, reason

At placement, not at reconciliation

Margin holds when the floor is a gate, not a guideline.

For delivery

The margin on a placement is visible before it is confirmed — thin deals re-priced, not discovered.

For finance

Forecast and actual reconcile against the same floor — fewer surprises at close.

For leadership

Proof that every placement was priced against the floor — with the reason for every exception.

Forecast and actual margin

See where your margin leaks.

A short review of how margin is forecast, floored, and reconciled across your placements — and where gating it at the floor would stop losses being booked before they are seen.