Open finance skill
Margin trend review
Why did gross margin change, and what should we investigate?
Calculate gross margin, revenue less direct costs as a share of revenue, from invented period summaries. Compare periods and flag changes large enough to review.
Records you need
- ✓Revenue by period
- ✓Direct costs by period
- ✓Size of change to review
What you get
- ✓Gross margin by period
- ✓Change in percentage points
- ✓Periods needing review
Checks performed
- ✓Gross margin calculation
- ✓Period comparison
- ✓Change exceeds the review threshold
From finding to decision
Did job economics change, or did the report include different costs?
Gross margin can change because of work mix, pricing, labor, missing costs or expense categories. A matching total does not tell you which explanation is right.
- Compare equivalent periods, the same rules for recording revenue and the same definition of direct costs.
- Separate changes in prices, volume and work mix from missing costs or costs moved to another category.
- Trace the largest change to job, payroll or purchase records before changing prices.
Evidence ready for review
The comparison explains supported changes and keeps the remaining unexplained difference visible.
Who makes the next decision?
The operating owner chooses a pricing, staffing or cost action only after the records support it.
Collect the supporting records from your software
Level diagnostic method reviewed . Apply it to the selected records and accounting policy; the teaching example does not resolve a live account.
Guided synthetic example
See the check from input to decision
Revenue grew in July, but gross profit declined.
How review effort might be shared
An illustrative allocation is 15% collecting records, 20% applying checks, 10% flagging results, 25% investigating reasons, 20% finance review and 10% choosing an action. These percentages were not measured across engagements. Actual effort varies with data quality, complexity and the issue found.
Start with the source records
| Period | Revenue | Direct costs | Gross profit | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | $100,000 | $60,000 | $40,000 | 40% |
| July | $110,000 | $71,500 | $38,500 | 35% |
Apply the documented check
Recompute gross margin by period and flag a movement of 3 percentage points or more.
Surface the flagged result
Needs review
Margin fell 5 percentage points and gross profit declined $1,500 despite 10% revenue growth.
Use recorded finance judgment to analyze possible reasons
At Level, we record the review logic, known explanations, and questions our finance professionals use in this situation. AI applies that documented human judgment to organize the most plausible reasons, without pretending it knows which reason is true.
Possible reasons to investigate
The arithmetic shows deterioration, not the cause. Labor overruns, pricing, materials, callbacks, and job mix all require investigation.
Make the final human judgment
In a Level engagement, a Level finance professional validates the source evidence, challenges the AI-assisted analysis, and decides which explanation is supported.
Make the operating decision
Review job-level margin and isolate the jobs or cost categories responsible for the decline.
Each skill uses an independent synthetic scenario. Shared month labels do not mean the examples describe one company or a single financial period.
Use this system
Start with the example, then inspect the structure
The JSON download is a sample record file to inspect with an AI assistant or developer. It is not a file to upload into your accounting software.
- Download the invented input and expected output.
- Replace one field at a time with a safe test value.
- Compare the result with the expected structure.
- Have a finance professional review every exception before acting.
Website example JSON and registry: CC BY 4.0 (attribution required). Downloadable toolkit ZIP: MIT. Each version identifies its own frozen examples.
Developer preview: AI-assistant helper (MCP)
This tool call returns fixed, invented sample records only. It does not connect to your books. Read the setup instructions.
run_synthetic_example {"slug":"margin-trend-review"}Human review is part of the system
This check organizes evidence and surfaces exceptions. A person with finance domain expertise still needs to interpret the result, validate the source records, and discuss the operating decision.
Open source does not mean open client data. We publish reusable finance tools, checks, templates, and playbooks. Client records, workpapers, credentials, communications, and private configurations remain confidential.
Use it yourself, or bring us the messy part
Get a one-page plan for checking your records
Tell us where the records stop making sense. We will reply with the first check to run, the records it needs, and the decision that still needs human finance judgment.
Install the free skills yourself