Guides
The monthly numbers a videography business owner should watch for new owners
Six monthly videography metrics, each with a formula, a data source, the threshold that triggers a decision, and the blind spot that makes the number lie.
What to take away
- Finishing hours per shoot hour, tracked by project type, is the number that tells you whether your quotes are honest. Almost no one logs it.
- Rank work by contribution per finishing hour. Edit capacity is the scarce resource, so it is the correct denominator, not the fee.
- Every metric needs a written threshold and a written action. A number with no trigger is decoration.
- Log hours the same day. Reconstructed timekeeping is fiction with a timestamp.
- Write down what each number cannot show. Blind spots recorded up front are what stop a confident decision in the wrong direction.
The six at a glance
| Metric | Denominator that matters | Act when |
|---|---|---|
| Finishing hours per shoot hour | Shoot hours, by project type | It exceeds your quoting assumption twice running |
| Contribution per finishing hour | Finishing hours, not fee | A project type sits bottom for two quarters |
| Revision rounds used against sold | Rounds included in the fee | The average passes one |
| Booked against deliverable capacity | Finishing hours available | It passes one anywhere in four weeks |
| Time to first useful reply | Working hours | The median passes one working day |
| Storage consumed per month | Month-on-month change | Growth is steady with no retention policy |
The six, defined
Finishing hours per shoot hour
Formula: total post hours on a project divided by total shoot hours, grouped by project type.
Finishing ratio and contribution formulas
- Post hours / shoot hoursFinishing hours per shoot hour
- Fee - labor - spend / finishing hoursContribution per finishing hour
- Loaded rateIncludes payroll taxes, benefits, PTO
- Two months runningWhen to act on the ratio
Source: time tracking, logged the same day. A wedding and a product launch spot do not belong in the same bucket, so split the report by the type of job you quote.
Act when: the figure for a project type rises above your quoting assumption two months running. Either the scope drifted or the price is wrong, and the two need different fixes.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you whether the extra hours produced a better piece. A slow edit and a careful edit look identical here.
Contribution per finishing hour
Formula: (project fee minus direct labor at your loaded rate minus pass-through spend) divided by finishing hours. Loaded rate means the hourly cost of the person editing, including the employer share of payroll taxes, benefits and paid time off, not the rate you bill.
Source: project-tagged accounting plus time tracking. If your bookkeeping cannot tag by project, that is the first thing to fix.
Act when: a project type sits at the bottom of the ranking for two quarters. Either fix its revision behavior or stop selling it as a fixed fee.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you whether the client will come back. A low-contribution project that sends three referrals is not a failure.
Revision rounds used against rounds sold
Formula: actual rounds completed divided by rounds included in the fee, averaged by project type.
Source: the review platform or the email trail, with an opening and closing date stamped on each round. A round is not a note; a round is a consolidated set of notes from the named approver.
Act when: the average exceeds one. Your round definition is not being enforced, which is a process problem before it is a pricing problem.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you whose fault the extra rounds were. Count them first, then look at whether the notes came from someone you never agreed to take direction from.
Booked capacity against deliverable capacity
Formula: finishing hours already committed for the next four weeks divided by finishing hours actually available in those weeks.
Source: the schedule, using measured finishing hours rather than optimistic ones. Pull the measured figure from the same time tracking that feeds the finishing ratio.
Act when: it exceeds one at any point in the four-week window. Stop booking into that window or subcontract now, not after the date slips.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you how far past four weeks the problem runs. When the pipeline is unusually full, look further out on its own.
Time to first useful reply
Formula: hours between an inquiry arriving and a real reply going out, measured in working hours. A real reply answers the question asked or names the next step.
Source: your inbox or client contact tool. Most of them report first-response time if you switch the setting on.
Act when: the median rises above one working day. This tracks conversion more closely than almost anything else you can measure cheaply.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you whether the inquiries were any good. A fast reply to unqualified leads is fast waste.
Storage consumed per month
Formula: total storage in use at month end, and the change from the previous month.
Source: your storage and cloud billing. Separate camera originals from project files and exports, because they age at different rates.
Act when: growth is steady and you have no retention policy. That is a cost with no end date.
Blind spot: it cannot tell you which projects are responsible unless you tag storage by project. Do that once the line becomes material.
Reading them together
Individually these numbers mislead. Read them in pairs.
Read metrics in pairs
- Contribution per finishing hour + revision rounds
- Booked vs capacity + time to first reply
- Finishing ratio + storage growth
- Each pair explains the other
Contribution per finishing hour next to revision rounds, because the second usually explains the first.
Booked against deliverable capacity next to time to first reply, because a company slow to reply is often slow because it is overloaded, and adding demand will not help.
Finishing ratio next to storage growth, because both climb when scope expands and the price does not.
The rules that keep a metric honest
Write the formula down before the first measurement and do not change it silently. A definition that drifts produces trends that are not real.
Rules that keep a metric honest
- Write the formula before first measurement
- Never change the definition silently
- Name the data source for every number
- Record what each number fails to show
- Review monthly while changing, quarterly when stable
Name the data source. A number nobody can trace back to a system is an opinion with a decimal point.
Record what each number fails to show, in the same document. Metrics chosen without their blind spots produce confident decisions in the wrong direction.
Review monthly while something is changing, quarterly once it is stable. Faster than monthly and you are reading noise.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure above depends on tools that will actually give the data back. Choose software on what you can extract, not on features, which is the argument in editing software and the numbers to watch.
The accounting layer underneath has to support project-level tagging. The IRS guidance on what records a business should keep describes a system that clearly shows income and expenses with the documents behind purchases, sales, payroll and assets. Project costing is a discipline built on top of that, not a separate system.
Some of these numbers involve client material and personal data, so where they live matters. NIST publishes small business quick-start guides on cybersecurity and privacy risk management, and CISA maintains cyber guidance for small and medium businesses. Both are written for organizations with no security staff.
What not to track
Track, borderline, or skip
Skip
- Follower counts
- Skip
- Showreel views
- Skip
- Revenue without costs
- Skip
- Hours worked as effort
- Skip
- Utilization
- On-camera personal data
- Crew hours
Borderline
- Follower counts
- Showreel views
- Revenue without costs
- Hours worked as effort
- Utilization
- Borderline
- On-camera personal data
- Crew hours
Obligation
- Follower counts
- Showreel views
- Revenue without costs
- Hours worked as effort
- Utilization
- On-camera personal data
- Obligation
- Crew hours
- Obligation
Utilization is the borderline case. It is useful once you have staff and misleading before that, because a solo owner's unbilled hours include selling, which is the work that produces the billable hours.
Two categories carry obligations rather than insight: anything involving personal data of people on camera, and anything about crew hours, which is a records requirement in its own right. Both belong with licensing, releases and compliance and with the practices in hiring and training a crew.
Common questions
Where do I start if I track nothing today?
Time by stage, per project. Everything else can be reconstructed later from accounting records; hours cannot. Start with shoot hours and finishing hours on the next three jobs.
Do I need a dashboard?
No. A spreadsheet updated monthly is enough for a company of this size, and it forces you to look at the numbers rather than glance at them. Add a tool when the spreadsheet itself becomes the bottleneck.
How long before the numbers mean anything?
Around ten projects for the ratios, three months for the capacity and reply figures. Do not change pricing on the strength of two projects.
Should staff see these numbers?
The operational ones, yes: capacity, revision rounds, reply times. Staff can influence those, and hiding them removes the reason to care. Contribution figures are usually the owner's business.
What if a number tells me something I do not want to hear?
That is the entire purpose. The most common unwelcome finding is that the most prestigious work has the worst contribution per finishing hour. Act on it deliberately rather than ignoring it, a decision that often feeds into expanding into another market.
