10 signs your business is leaving revenue on the table

The clearest signs that your business is leaving revenue on the table are: sales and finance quote different revenue figures, prices have not been adjusted for years even though contracts allow it, invoicing depends on one person, work is invoiced weeks after it was done, and customers never complain about an invoice that is too low. None of these signs proves a leak. They tell you where to look. If you recognise three or more, the question is not whether you are leaving revenue on the table, but where and how much.

Why the warning signs matter

Revenue leakage does not throw an error message. The books close, customers pay, customers are happy. What is missing is revenue that should have been there, and missing revenue appears in no report. That is why you have to recognise it from the edges: from behaviour, from processes and from small inconsistencies that look harmless on their own.

Below are ten signs. For each one: what you see, what it usually points to, and how to check it. A complete approach to finding leaks is set out in how to find revenue leakage in a business.

1. Sales and finance quote different revenue figures

What you see. At the monthly meeting, the sales director quotes a revenue figure from the CRM and the finance director a different figure from the accounts. The difference is waved away as "timing" or "definitions".

What it points to. Sometimes it really is timing. Often, though, there are also won deals that were never invoiced, or deals invoiced for a different amount than was sold.

How to check it. Take one closed quarter. Set all won deals beside all invoices for the same customers. Every difference should have an explanation you can point to.

2. Prices have not been adjusted for years

What you see. The price list or the contract rates have not changed for two or three years, while your own costs for staff, materials and energy have gone up.

What it points to. Missed indexation, or a price increase that was decided but not applied everywhere. Because every missed increase is the base for the next, this compounds.

How to check it. Take your ten largest contracts and look up the indexation clause. Compare the current invoice price with what the clause allows. A worked-out approach is in how to find missed price increases.

3. Invoicing depends on one person

What you see. One employee knows which customers have a special arrangement, which hours are and are not charged on, and when additional work has to go on the invoice. When that person is on holiday, invoicing stalls or goes wrong.

What it points to. Agreements that are not recorded in any system. What is not recorded cannot be checked, and what cannot be checked leaks unnoticed.

How to check it. Ask that person to list every exception they know by heart. For each exception, check whether it is recorded anywhere. The length of that list says a lot.

4. Work is invoiced weeks after it was done

What you see. Job sheets, timesheets or deliveries are collected and invoiced once a month or even less often. On average three to six weeks pass between the work and the invoice.

What it points to. The longer the gap between doing the work and invoicing it, the greater the chance that something is left lying or forgotten. A job sheet that has still not been invoiced after six weeks becomes harder and harder to invoice at all.

How to check it. For the past three months, measure the average time between the work and the invoice. Then look for work carried out without an invoice. See how to check that all revenue is invoiced.

5. Customers never complain about an invoice that is too low

What you see. Customers report straight away when an invoice is too high. A report that an invoice is too low almost never comes.

What it points to. Nothing, on its own. Customers have no reason to report that they are paying too little. But it means your complaints log only shows errors in one direction. If there are many corrections downwards, there are almost certainly errors upwards too that nobody reports.

How to check it. Count the credit notes and corrections from the past year. Assume that at least as many errors were made in the customer's favour, and take a sample to see whether that holds.

6. Discounts are given but never withdrawn

What you see. Introductory discounts, goodwill discounts, discounts to hit the quarter. They are given quickly and rarely have an end date.

What it points to. Temporary discounts that have become permanent. After a few years nobody knows why a customer pays 20 percent less than the rest.

How to check it. Export all active discounts per customer from the billing system. For each discount, check whether there is a recorded reason and an end date.

7. Margin falls while revenue rises

What you see. Revenue grows, but gross margin declines, without a clear explanation on the cost side.

What it points to. It could be many things: rising purchase prices, a different product mix. But it can also mean that prices are not keeping pace with costs, that discounts have become deeper or that work is being delivered and not invoiced.

How to check it. Break the margin decline down by product, customer and account manager. A decline concentrated in a few customers or a few salespeople points to leakage rather than to market conditions.

8. Nobody knows which contracts are about to expire

What you see. There is no list of expiring contracts, or that list sits in a spreadsheet nobody maintains. Renewals happen tacitly or when the customer calls.

What it points to. Contracts that carry on at old rates, services delivered after a contract has ended, and customers who leave without anyone having a renewal conversation.

How to check it. Make a list of every contract with an end date in the next six months. If you cannot do that within an hour, you have your answer.

9. Existing customers are slowly buying less

What you see. No cancellations, no complaints. But if you look at revenue per customer over two years, some customers are steadily declining.

What it points to. Customers who have started buying part of what they need elsewhere, or who are winding down. By the time it arrives as a cancellation, most of it has already gone.

How to check it. Compare revenue per customer over the past twelve months with the twelve months before. Sort by the largest decline in euros. See how to spot customers who are quietly buying less.

10. Reports are rebuilt for every meeting

What you see. Before every management or board meeting, someone spends a day in a spreadsheet combining figures from different systems. The result is questioned again at every meeting.

What it points to. Systems that do not line up, duplicate customers, fields filled in differently. That is not a leak in itself, but it makes every leakage check expensive, so it does not happen.

How to check it. Ask the person who builds the reports which manual corrections are needed every time. Every correction is a place where the data is wrong.

How to use the warning signs

Count how many of the ten you recognise. It is not a scientific measurement, but it gives you direction.

Worked example: suppose you recognise signs 2, 4 and 6. You have 80 maintenance contracts averaging EUR 15,000 a year. On checking, it turns out that 30 contracts are two years behind on a 3 percent indexation (an average shortfall of EUR 914 a year), that 2 percent of job sheets were not invoiced and that 8 customers have a 10 percent introductory discount that should have stopped long ago. With 3,000 job sheets averaging EUR 250, together that is: 30 × EUR 914 + 60 × EUR 250 + 8 × EUR 1,500 = EUR 27,420 + EUR 15,000 + EUR 12,000 = EUR 54,420 a year. Three signs, three checks, a concrete amount.

How large leakage can be at B2B companies in general, and why an average says little, is covered in how much revenue a B2B company leaks on average. What revenue leakage is exactly, and the forms it takes, is covered in the complete guide to revenue leakage.

Frequently asked questions

Does a warning sign prove I am leaving revenue on the table?

No. A sign points to a place where leakage is likely. Only when you run the check and find a concrete difference, with a customer, an amount and a cause, do you know for sure.

Which sign matters most?

That differs per company. In practice the difference between sales and finance figures often yields something fastest, because the check is simple and the amounts per deal can be large.

How often should I go through these signs?

Once a year is the minimum. It is better to make the checks that go with the signs recurring, so you do not have to wait for the signs to appear.

I do not recognise a single sign. Does that mean there is no leakage?

Not necessarily. It means the most visible signs are absent. Leakage in patterns, such as customers slowly buying less, often only shows up when you look for it deliberately.