Aperture Analytics™ · the Profit Map
Which products and customers actually make you money?
The Profit Map ranks every product, customer and location by what it genuinely earns, after the real cost of serving it. Fixed fee of $8,500.
Applied fromACCT 610 · Financial Accounting,SCMT 610 · Business Analytics· Texas A&M Executive MBA
By Fenwick How, Founder
BBA in Project Management, certified PMP, currently completing an Executive MBA at Texas A&M. He leads the work himself, start to finish.
What is a Profit Map?
A Profit Map is a full financial statement analysis of your business, reconciled to your own P&L, that then breaks profit down by product, customer and location after the true cost of serving each one. It reads the statements as an analyst would, common-size and trend, return decomposed into margin and asset productivity, the ratio families on one consistent basis, the cash conversion cycle priced in real money, and the quality of the earnings tested. It comes with a scenario model you keep and can re-run yourself, so a price change or a new hire can be tested before you commit to it.
The problem
Why is the profit not showing up?
Revenue is up. Everyone is busy. The bank balance says something else, and nobody in the business can tell you exactly why. That is the most common conversation we have, and it almost never turns out to be a mystery. It turns out to be arithmetic nobody has done.
In practice one part of the business is quietly subsidising another. A few products earn most of the margin while a long tail earns almost nothing once you count the labor to make and handle them. A handful of customers are genuinely profitable, and others consume discounts, rush jobs and hand-holding until they cost more than they pay. A location looks like the flagship right up until you account for the rent, the labor and the manager's time it really takes to run.
None of it shows up in a single profit line, because the P&L adds everything together. The winners and the losers are blended into one comfortable number at the bottom, and the parts that are bleeding stay invisible for years.
Most owners have plenty of numbers. What they do not have is anyone who turns them into a decision.
The solution
How does a Profit Map fix that?
By building the view properly, once, and leaving you the model. Every headline figure reconciles back to your own accounts, so nothing in it is arguable on the grounds that it does not tie. Then profitability is separated by the unit your business is actually made of, and the decisions you are weighing are run through a model rather than a conversation.
The analysis behind it
Not every technique applies to every business. Some need disclosures a private company does not publish, and some matter far more when the owner is also the payroll. The report says which ones were run, which were adapted, and which were not possible, rather than quietly leaving a gap.
What you walk away with
- The Profit Map report, in four parts: the face of the statements, what the notes disclose, the quality of the earnings, and the judgment that follows
- Profitability ranked by product, customer and location, after the real cost of serving each
- Every ratio family on one consistent basis, with return decomposed into margin and asset productivity
- The cash conversion cycle priced: what each day of collection, inventory and payment released or consumed
- Break-even, margin of safety, and what each lever is worth, ranked by size of effect
- A multi-year scenario model in Excel, yours to keep and re-run
- A derivation appendix: every figure traced to its formula and its source, so the analysis can be checked rather than believed
It runs on your statements, a transaction-level export and your payroll by role. About four weeks. Every number reconciles to your own accounts before anything is concluded from it, and every figure in the report traces to a stated formula from a sourced input.
The proof
Can I see the analysis before I buy it?
Yes, in full, on real companies, with nothing held back and no email required. This is the part of the work most firms will only show you after you have signed.
Three companies. One method. Completely different questions.
Two complete analyses, published from public filings: a listed retailer with forty billion in revenue and an audited 10-K, and an owner-managed fabricator with eighteen million and a set of reviewed accounts. Read side by side they make a point that is hard to make in the abstract. It is not public versus private that breaks a comparison, it is tax status: a pass-through pays no entity-level tax, so its net margin sits structurally higher than an identical C corporation's, and nothing in either set of statements warns you the comparison has already failed.
Built from the companies' own public filings. Neither company is a client, and neither was involved in or reviewed the analysis.
Lumina Medical Aesthetics
A growing three-clinic med-spa. Revenue climbed 61% in three years while profit stayed essentially flat. Separating the numbers showed why, and the scenario model let the owner test the fix before committing to it.
Lumina is a worked example built to demonstrate the method, not a client engagement, and it is labeled that way everywhere it appears.
The alternatives
Why not just ask my accountant?
Because a good accountant is telling you what happened, accurately and on time, and that is a different job from telling you which product line is losing money. Here is the whole landscape, side by side.
| Dimension | The Aperture Method | Large consultancies | Local advisors & CPAs | GIS & data vendors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantitative depth | Graduate level | Graduate level | Rarely the quantitative work | Data, not analysis |
| Spatial and market intelligence | Yes, tied to the decision | Seldom offered at your size | No | Maps and lists, no strategy |
| Who does the work | Fenwick How, accountable start to finish | A team you did not meet | Your advisor, part time | A platform or a vendor |
| What it costs | Fixed fee, from $4,500 | Enterprise retainers | Hourly or per filing | Per report or subscription |
| What you keep | Models, dashboards and working files | The deck | Your accounts | A file export |
| After the recommendation | Stays until the strategy is running | The engagement ends | Ongoing, but not strategic | No follow-through |
The price
What does it cost?
$8,500, fixed, agreed before anything starts.
No hourly billing and no invoice you did not see coming. If you are not certain this is the right place to start, the $4,500 Business X-Ray will tell you which component you actually need, and it counts in full toward the Method if you continue within 60 days.
Taking three deep components plus the X-Ray separately comes to more than the full Method at $25,000. If you are likely to want all of it, say so and we will price it as the Method.
Not ready to book? Ask a question first. Asking does not begin an engagement.
Where it fits
One component of a five-part method.
Every component is a complete engagement on its own, and a step in the larger arc. Take this one, or run the whole Method.
Before you book
Questions owners ask about the Profit Map.
My business is private. Does all of this still apply?
Most of it does, and the parts that cannot are replaced rather than quietly skipped. A private company has no share price, so market capitalization, price-to-earnings and market-to-book have nothing to read from. Value is constructed instead, from normalized earnings and an evidenced multiple range, and the range is the answer rather than the midpoint. Distress risk uses the private-company form of the Altman score. And because an owner sets their own pay and often rents the building to themselves, reported earnings reflect a tax decision as much as the cost of running the business, so owner compensation, related-party rent and one-off costs are normalized with an evidence grade on every add-back.
What data do you actually need?
Profit and loss statements for three years plus year to date, four balance sheet dates, cash flow statements, revenue broken out by product or service, payroll or headcount by role, and a transaction-level export if one exists. The full list is generated for you when you fill in the intake, and it adapts to how your business is taxed and whether you hold inventory.
Do I need a transaction-level export?
It is the single most useful file you can send, because it is what makes repeat rate, lifetime value and seasonality measurable rather than estimated. If your systems cannot produce one, the analysis still runs, and the report says plainly which conclusions were derived and which were estimated.
What if my numbers do not tie?
Then we find out why before we analyze anything, and that is often the first finding. Nothing gets built on figures that do not reconcile, because a model that disagrees with your own accounts is a model you will never trust or use.
Do I keep the model?
Yes. The scenario model is an Excel file that is yours, with the formulas visible and no locked cells. You can re-run it next quarter without calling anybody, which is the point of building it rather than presenting from it.
How is this different from what my bookkeeper produces?
Your bookkeeper is recording what happened, which is a job that has to be done correctly and usually is. This is the layer above it: allocating the real cost of serving each product and customer, ranking them, and testing what happens if you change one. Almost nobody is asked to do that, so almost nobody does.
Do I have to start with the Business X-Ray?
No. If you already know the question is financial, start here. The X-Ray exists for the case where you are not sure, and at $4,500 it is the cheaper way to find out than buying the wrong component.
Last reviewed . Fees and timings on this page are current as of that date.