Package ongoing advisory as a retainer
When it may fit: Clients return for repeated help.
Evidence needed: Past repeat engagement history.
Trade-off: Scope must be defined.
Professional Services Intelligence Brief
How to Evaluate Recurring Revenue Opportunities
Recurring work smooths revenue, improves planning and usually earns steadier margins. The task is to see which services can become recurring and what that would be worth.
1. The business problem
Which of our work could be turned into recurring revenue?
Project work depends on winning the next engagement. Recurring work, such as annual compliance, monthly accounting or ongoing advisory retainers, arrives on a schedule and makes capacity planning easier.
The question is how much of the firm’s revenue is already recurring, how stable it is, and which other services could be packaged the same way.
2. What the evidence can reveal
Recurring revenue analysis compares the types of work:
- Calculated Share of revenue that is recurring and its growth.
- Calculated Margin and realization on recurring work, compared with project work.
- Calculated Retention: how many clients continue year to year.
- Information gap Client willingness to commit, pricing models and the effort of delivering on a schedule.
The aim is not just revenue stability but also margin stability and smoother use of capacity.
3. Investigate the problem
In the synthetic firm, Calculated the two most recurring-looking services are Tax & Compliance ($8.30M) and Outsourced Accounting ($5.50M). Together they are about 52% of fee revenue and earn about 55% of contribution, at margins of 41.0% and 36.4%. Their revenue grew 6.4% and 5.8%, slower than the firm’s 7.3%.
Calculated Margin by quarter is volatile: operating margin ranged from 4.1% in the first quarter of FY26 to 10.5% in the fourth. Hypothesis Steady recurring work would be expected to narrow that swing, so one opportunity is to move some project and seasonal work to monthly or retainer arrangements. Information gap The demo does not say how much of each line is truly contracted or retained.
Illustrative An illustration of the planning value, with invented numbers: if the firm could move 10% of the revenue from its project lines to retainers, about $1.3 million of the $12.6 million in non-tax, non-accounting revenue (advisory, technology and litigation), then planning capacity would be easier and the effect of a slow quarter smaller. The true value depends on pricing and retention, which the demo does not show.
4. Explore the interactive experience
Investigate it yourself.
Firm Economics Dashboard: a service-line dashboard with utilization and realization, a scenario simulator for hours, rate and cost, evidence-linked answers from APIS, and a sample brief, all on synthetic data.
The experience below is built on a synthetic firm, “Demo Advisory Partners,” analyzed by service line. It has no client-level, pipeline or business development records, so service lines are used to show the method. Nothing in it is real.
- Select Tax & Compliance and then Outsourced Accounting. How large and how profitable are the recurring-type lines?
- Click the Operating margin card and read the quarterly swings.
- Ask APIS which service lines warrant a closer review.
5. Evaluate possible solutions
Recurring models need design and a clear value to the client.
6. What leadership should do next
Questions to answer
- What share of revenue is recurring?
- What is retention?
- Which services could be packaged?
- Would clients commit?
Data to gather
- Revenue by type
- Retention history
- Client interviews
- Pricing options
Steps to take
- Measure the recurring share.
- Design one offer.
- Test with a few clients.
- Scale if retention holds.
7. Engage Two Pillars
Understand Your Firm’s Economics and Growth Opportunities
Two Pillars can help professional services firms investigate client profitability, engagement operations, capacity and strategic growth using your own data. A good first step is a recurring-revenue analysis that sizes the opportunity and tests a packaged offer.
Sources and data notes
- The organization, its figures, and every number in this article and its interactive experience are synthetic and illustrative. They are not real data, a benchmark, or a forecast.
- Reviewed October 2026. This article describes an approach to investigation. It does not replace review by qualified professionals.