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Leak Check Identify the likely profit or tax leak to validate first. See what you get
The operating standard for service businesses

The 60/15/15 Standard.

Bennett Financials’ financial operating framework for established service businesses. Four numbers. One system. Total clarity.

Anatomy of $1.00 in revenueTarget allocation
40%COGS
15%S&M
15%G&A
30%Operating Profit
COGS Sales & Marketing G&A Overhead Operating Profit
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0160% gross margin
0215% sales & marketing
0315% G&A
0430% operating margin

Installed across $96M+ in service revenue

$402,838
Average tax liability eliminated per client, per year, through entity restructuring and strategic planning.
$220K+
Annual tax savings deployed for a legal services firm.
$185K+
Tax savings captured through proactive quarterly strategy.
$125K
In past overpayments recaptured through amended returns and structure corrections.
$96.2M
Revenue under management.

The Four Numbers

Four numbers that frame your operating model.

Each isolates a different failure mode. When they're aligned, profit compounds. When they drift, it bleeds.

60% Gross Margin
01 · Gross Margin

What you keep after delivering the work.

Revenue minus direct costs — labor, subcontractors, tools, materials. This is the rawest test of whether your business model actually works. Everything else is downstream of this number.

Below 60%
Underpricing, over-delivering, or carrying too much direct cost.
At or above 60%
Pricing power, efficient delivery, room to scale profitably.
02 · Sales & Marketing

What it costs to win new business.

Advertising, sales comp, marketing tools, content, biz dev. This is where growth ambition meets math — and where most service businesses quietly leak profit chasing the wrong channels.

Over 15%
CAC eating profit. Broken funnel, wrong ICP, or weak conversion.
10–15%
Repeatable acquisition. Predictable unit economics.
15% Sales & Marketing
15% G&A Overhead
03 · G&A Overhead

The silent margin killer.

Rent, insurance, admin, software, accounting, legal — everything not tied to delivery or sales. G&A creeps up one SaaS subscription, one office upgrade, one non-revenue hire at a time. Nobody notices until margin is gone.

Over 15%
Overhead has outgrown the business. Tool bloat, admin drag.
Under 15%
Lean back-office. Every dollar defensible and reviewed.
04 · Operating Margin

The outcome when the system is working.

What remains from operations before interest, income taxes, and other non-operating items. Bennett uses 30% as a diagnostic operating-margin target for established service businesses; model, stage, classification, risk, and planned investment determine what is feasible.

Below the target
The gap needs diagnosis; it does not prove that any one expense bucket is the cause.
30% target
Bennett’s diagnostic destination, not a promise or a measured national average.
30% Operating Margin

The Calculator

Find your profit gap in 30 seconds.

Drop in your revenue and rough margins. We’ll map them to the 60/15/15 and show the directional difference between your inputs and the benchmark — not a forecast or guaranteed recovery.

Your business

Annual revenue$3,000,000
Gross margin42%
Sales & marketing22%
G&A overhead18%
Your stack today2%
The 60/15/15 standard30%
COGS 40%
15%
15%
30%
Your annual profit gap
$840,000
That is the annual operating-income gap between your inputs and the 60/15/15 target, before interest, income taxes, and other items outside the framework.
Use this as a directional estimate. A Leak Check talks through the same rough numbers with no document prep and maps likely profit and tax leaks with conservative ranges. The Scale-Ready Assessment is the separate document-backed step that validates the gap.
Book a 20-minute Leak Check

Same Revenue · Different Outcome

What $3M looks like with and without the standard.

BeforeTypical $3M Business
Gross Margin
Sales & Marketing
G&A
Operating Income$60K
After 60/15/15Optimized $3M Business
Gross Margin
Sales & Marketing
G&A
Operating Income$900K
The gap
+$840,000
directional annual difference between these inputs and the benchmark on the same top-line revenue. Actual opportunity requires document-backed analysis.
Map likely leaks

The Install

90 days from chaos to operating standard.

This section describes the implementation engagement after the document-backed Scale-Ready Assessment — not the 20-minute Leak Check. The 60/15/15 operating system is installed, monitored, and optimized every month.

Day 0Day 90+
Day 0
01
Days 1–14 · Diagnose

Map every dollar.

We begin from the Scale-Ready Assessment’s validated findings, then restructure the financials around the 60/15/15 so the implementation team can measure the starting point consistently.

  • Full P&L restructured through the 60/15/15 standard
  • 3-year tax liability audit & overpayment recovery review
  • Validated Scale-Ready findings translated into implementation work
  • First 30 days sequenced from the agreed 12–24-month roadmap
By Day 14 You know your four numbers — and what's broken.
02
Days 15–60 · Install

Rebuild the system.

We restructure the chart of accounts, clean the data, deploy tax strategy, and wire up a live dashboard that runs the standard automatically every month.

  • Chart of accounts rebuilt around the 60/15/15
  • Books cleaned, reconciled, and monthly-close standardized
  • Tax strategy deployed — entity, comp, retirement, timing
  • Live KPI dashboard wired to your accounting system
By Day 60 Your financial OS runs without you.
03
Days 61–90+ · Execute

Compound the gain.

Monthly CFO meetings with budget vs. actuals. We isolate the single biggest bottleneck, execute the fix, and move to the next — margin compounding every cycle.

  • Monthly CFO meeting: budget vs. actuals vs. the standard
  • One bottleneck isolated and fixed per cycle (pricing / CAC / GM / G&A)
  • Rolling 13-week cash-flow + 12-month forecast
  • Quarterly exit-readiness review against enterprise-value levers
Day 90+ Operating margin moving toward the Bennett target.

Run your business through the standard.

The free Leak Check uses rough numbers for a directional 60/15/15 snapshot. In 20 minutes, with no document prep, we surface likely profit and tax leaks with conservative ranges and send a one-page Leak Map with a suggested next validation step.

Book Your Leak Check

No obligation. No documents. Rough numbers are enough.

Bennett Financials runs a flat $5K/month implementation engagement. If you're under $1M revenue or that's not your budget range, you still keep the one-page Leak Map — but the full engagement isn't a fit.

FAQ

Questions about 60/15/15 Profit Framework.

Clear answers to the questions owners ask before deciding what to do next.