Which location is actually making me money?
Multi-location businesses usually know total revenue and total profit. Very few can rank their locations by contribution after honest overhead allocation — which is exactly the number that decides where to invest, staff and expand.
The strongest location often subsidizes the weakest for years before anyone can prove it.
Location performance is compared on revenue, because that is the only number allocated cleanly. Overhead, management time and shared labor blur everything else.
A location that loses money consumes the cash, staffing and attention the profitable one needs. Expansion decisions made on blended numbers tend to multiply the problem.
How to know if you have this
- Corporate overhead is split evenly regardless of demand
- You cannot rank locations by contribution margin
- One site is known to be 'a little slow' but has never been measured
- Expansion decisions rely on company-wide averages
How Advisory Motion solves it
- 01Build a location P&L with defensible allocation of shared overhead
- 02Normalize for size, maturity and market so comparison is fair
- 03Measure labor efficiency, revenue per unit of capacity and contribution per site
- 04Produce a ranked view with the specific action for each location
Four locations, one funding the rest
After honest allocation, the newest site was contributing 41% of profit on 24% of revenue, and one long-standing location was negative. The decision was not to close it — it was a staffing and pricing correction with a 90-day review.
Illustrative composite · not a client identification