New business and the cost of winning work

Winning work takes time, and time is a cost — usually an invisible one. Business → New business makes it visible: every open deal gets a BD budget, the time you log against it is priced at cost rates, and once deals settle you get honest answers to "what does it cost me to win a client?"

BD budgets

Each deal's budget is a percentage of its expected value — if you'll spend up to 10% of a £20,000 deal's value winning it, that's a £2,000 budget. The default percentage applies to every new deal (change it at the top of the page); click any deal's % to override it for that deal alone. The usage bar turns amber past 75% and red past 100%, so a deal that's eating more selling time than it's worth shows up while you can still do something about it.

Logging deal time

In Timesheets → Log Time, switch the entry from Project work to New business (deal), pick the deal, and log the hours — optionally against one of the deal's tasks. Deal time is always non-billable: it's a cost, priced at cost rates against the deal's BD budget. A one-click starter checklist on the deal adds the usual steps — qualify, discovery, proposal, follow-up, negotiate, contract — as tasks; edit or extend them freely.

When you win

Converting a won deal asks what to do with the time you logged:

• Recoup it — carry it into the project as a pre-project phase, or merge it into the project's time, so the engagement absorbs its own selling cost.
• Write it off — the time stays in New Business as part of what winning work costs you.

Either way the choice is recorded, so the analytics below stay honest.

Internal projects and general BD time

Plenty of business development isn't about one deal: networking events, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, conference days. Business → Internal projects lists all your internal (non-billable) projects with their cost — tick New Bus on one and its time counts as business development (the same toggle lives on the project's Financials tab).

A tagged project can then go two ways:

• No deal linked — its time is general BD overhead: listed by project in New Business and folded into your cost per win as overhead spread across wins.
• Linked to a pipeline deal ("Supports deal") — its time counts toward that deal's BD cost instead, alongside time logged directly on the deal. Use this when a chunk of preparatory work for one pursuit is big enough to run as its own project.

Internal projects without the tick stay plain overhead and are left out of New Business entirely. Pro-bono projects (a client attached) aren't BD — their cost reports against that client.

Cost of winning work

The analytics cover deals settled in the last 6 months, plus general BD time over the same period:

• Win rate — won vs lost.
• Total BD cost — time at cost rates across settled deals, wins and losses.
• General BD overhead — flagged internal-project time, not tied to a deal.
• Cost per win — total deal cost plus general overhead, divided by wins. Losing costs you too, so it's in here.
• Actual cost of sale — what winning actually cost as a % of won value, against your target %.
• Written off — lost deals plus written-off wins.

If your actual cost of sale is consistently above your target, either deals are taking too much selling effort or the budget percentage is set optimistically — both worth knowing before you price the next one.