Where to find it | Sidebar → Finance → Divisional P&Ls |
Who can see it | Leadership. The personnel section has a second, narrower list on top of that. |
Can you change data here? | Only the forecast. Everything else is read-only. |
How fresh is it? | Payroll syncs nightly; most figures cache for about 30 minutes |
What it's for
This replaced the finance team's hand-built divisional P&L workbooks.
For each division — B2B, Core, Consumer Services, CPG, Fashion, Lifestyle, plus Healthcare and Shared Services (both marked "nuanced") — leadership needs to know how much revenue each service department produces, what outsourced delivery costs, what the people delivering it actually cost across several payroll systems in three countries, and therefore whether the division is profitable.
It reproduces the finance P&L layout — the revenue rollup was verified to the penny against Finance's own totals in June 2026 — and adds three things a spreadsheet can't:
Hover any payroll cell to see exactly which employees make up that number
A shared, team-editable forecast grid whose inputs flow straight into the P&L
A per-client roster showing which contracts produce the revenue and when each ends
What you'll see
The P&L table, one column per month plus a total, walking down:
Line | What it is |
Department revenue | One row per service department |
VABO | Shown separately, as its own row |
In Contract Revenue | All departments added up, VABO excluded |
Core Revenue | In-contract revenue minus shared-service departments |
Team Forecast Revenue | Your typed forecast, for forecast months only |
COGS | Outsourcing cost per department, plus forecast |
Gross Profit and % margin | Revenue minus COGS |
Personnel Expenses | Fully-loaded people cost, per department |
Corporate Expenses (Allocation) | A placeholder — see below |
Operating Expenses | Currently equal to personnel |
Contribution Margin and Total Profit | Currently identical to each other |
Summary cards including a year-on-year comparison when you turn Compare on.
A "Data sources" legend under the table showing whether each payroll feed is live, imported by hand, or missing.
Two other tabs — the Forecast Tool grid, and a Client Roster listing every contract with its monthly revenue, type and end date.
Actuals versus Forecast
Months up to two calendar months before now are Actuals. Everything later is Forecast.
That's because financial data finalizes roughly fifteen days after a month closes. So the current month and the previous one are provisional by design — if this month shows as Forecast, that's correct, not a bug.
Corporate allocation isn't built yet
The Corporate Expenses (Allocation) section is an on-screen placeholder — the methodology hasn't been decided.
The consequence matters: Operating Expenses currently equals Personnel Expenses, and Total Profit equals Contribution Margin. Read Total Profit as pre-corporate-allocation. The bottom of this P&L will change when allocation ships.
How to use it
Monthly division review. Pick a division and the current year, scan the summary cards, then walk the table from department revenue down to profit — using the Actuals and Forecast column labels to separate what's closed from what's projected.
Year-on-year. Set Compare to a prior year. You get the full comparison year alongside, and a year-on-year card summarizing growth.
Diagnose a payroll number. Hover any personnel cell to see the exact people behind it — name, title and which payroll system they came from. Then check the data-sources legend to confirm the feeds are current before you trust it. Is that spike a real hire, or stale data?
Enter the forecast. On the Forecast Tool tab, type projected new business, expected churn (as a negative), projected outsourcing cost, and planned hires, raises or reductions into future months, then save. Flip back to the P&L and they're already in the forecast rows, gross profit and margins. Can the division afford the planned hires and still hit its margin?
Contract-risk scan. On the Client Roster tab, sorted by soonest contract end, see which contracts end next and how much monthly revenue leaves with them. Filter retainer versus project to separate recurring from one-off.
Hand data to finance. Export the revenue table, the client roster, or — with the export password — the per-worker personnel CSV.
What you can change
The forecast, and nothing else.
Ten fixed metrics: projected VABO, new business MRR and project, expansion MRR and project, churn (enter it as a negative), projected outsourcing COGS, new-hire expenses, non-backfill reductions and planned salary increases.
Only months after the actuals cutoff are editable — past months are locked, because those come from the source systems. The grid shows who last updated it and when, and it's shared, so your colleagues see your numbers.
Everything else — revenue, VABO, COGS, contract dates, payroll — comes from upstream systems and cannot be edited in Signal.
Where personnel cost comes from
Each cell is fully-loaded monthly people cost. Per worker, the most authoritative available source wins:
US payroll gross, plus a pro-rata share of the benefits and payroll-tax pools from accounting
Colombia payroll actual total cost, converted to dollars
Contractor bill payments from accounting
International contractor invoices
An annualized salary estimate, divided by twelve
Hire and termination dates decide which months a person contributes to.
Only division and department totals appear on screen. Hovering shows names and titles — never individual pay.
Good to know
Two access layers. Getting into the page isn't the same as seeing all of it. The Personnel Expenses section is limited to a short, separately maintained list — roughly fifteen people. Leadership access alone shows revenue and COGS but leaves personnel empty. That's expected.
The per-worker CSV export needs a password on top of leadership access, because unlike the on-screen totals it contains individual compensation-level cost. Ask the Signal team for it. The export also only includes workers in the eight P&L divisions, so its totals can be slightly lower than an unfiltered payroll total.
VABO is attributed by Finance, not by client division. A CPG client's VABO can sit under Shared Services. VABO is also excluded from gross profit and margins entirely.
The Corporate department is excluded from revenue as a forecast placeholder, and Retail Marketing VABO is excluded because it belongs to that department's own P&L. Both are deliberate Finance decisions.
Payroll freshness varies by feed. US and international contractor actuals sync nightly. Colombia is a manual import and can lag. Anyone with no actuals anywhere shows an annualized estimate. The legend under the table tells you which is which — read it before quoting a number.
Most figures cache for about 30 minutes, so a freshly closed month can lag briefly. Caches are cleared at sign-out, so nobody inherits the previous user's payroll data in a shared browser.
Profit cells show a dash until payroll loads, so a half-computed profit never displays.
Common questions
Who can see this page? Leadership only, and the personnel section needs the additional payroll list. See Who can see what.
Why doesn't the revenue match our finance system? It should — it was verified to the penny in June 2026. Differences usually come down to one of four things: you're comparing against the forecast cube rather than contract data (Signal deliberately uses contract data); VABO, which is a separate row and excluded from in-contract revenue; the excluded Corporate department; or caching of up to 30 minutes.
Why is the current month showing as Forecast? By design — see "Actuals versus Forecast" above.
What's in a personnel number, and can I see who? Fully-loaded monthly cost per department. Hover the cell for names, titles and payroll source. Per-person amounts are never shown on screen.
How fresh is payroll? US and international contractor data syncs nightly. Colombia is imported manually and can lag. The legend shows each feed's status.
Who can enter the forecast, and where does it go? Anyone who can reach the Forecast Tool tab. It's stored with the editor's name and timestamp, appears immediately in the P&L's forecast rows, and never overrides an actual month.
Why can't I edit an earlier month's forecast cell? Months at or before the actuals cutoff are locked — those come from the source systems.
Why is Total Profit the same as Contribution Margin? Corporate allocation isn't built yet. See the section above.
Why isn't a CPG client's VABO in the CPG P&L? Because VABO is attributed to whichever division Finance assigned it to, not the client's division.
How do I get the per-worker CSV, and why the password? The export button prompts for it. It's separately gated because the file contains individual compensation-level cost. Ask the Signal team.
What does a dash mean for a contract end date? There's no scheduled revenue end for that contract. A red date means the contract has already ended.
Related
Census — the worker roster behind the payroll numbers
Revenue Overlap — one reason a division's P&L and its people's real workload diverge
Client Profitability — the lighter per-client estimate
Summary — the company-level view
Retention Forecast — a different page despite the similar name
Glossary — VABO, gross profit, division