---
title: What your contract book is worth in ninety days
description: Contract revenue looks recurring until it isn't. How to forecast run-off, weight extensions honestly, and see the cliff while you can still do something.
---

[Echo Recruit blog](https://www.echorecruit.com/blog)

# [What your contract book is worth in ninety days](https://www.echorecruit.com/blog/what-your-contract-book-is-worth-in-ninety-days)

 Written by [Echo Recruit](https://www.echorecruit.com/blog/author/echo-recruit) | Oct 20, 2026, 5:46:18 AM

*Contract income feels like subscription revenue right up to the quarter where four assignments end in the same fortnight.*

In short

- A contract book is not recurring revenue. It is a set of fixed-term commitments, each with an end date you already know.
- Forecast it by summing assignments week by week, weighted by an honest extension probability — not by projecting last month forward.
- Extension probability should come from your own history, per client, not from optimism. Track the outcome so the number improves.
- The point of the forecast is lead time. A gap you see twelve weeks out is a sourcing plan; the same gap at three weeks is a revenue hole.

Permanent desks live and die by the month, and everyone knows it. Contract desks feel steadier — the same contractors, the same weekly hours, money arriving on a rhythm. That steadiness is real but it is not recurring, and the difference is the thing that catches people out.

Every assignment has an end date, and that date was known the day the contract was signed. A contract book is therefore one of the most forecastable things in recruitment. Most agencies simply never build the forecast, and instead discover the shape of next quarter when it arrives.

## Build the run-off first

Start with the unweighted version — what the book is worth if nothing is extended and nothing is added. It is pessimistic by construction, and it is the only number in the exercise that contains no opinion.

For each live assignment you need four things: weekly billable hours, bill rate, gross margin per hour, and contract end date. Lay out the next thirteen weeks and, for each week, sum the margin from every assignment still running.

 A twelve-contractor book, unweighted run-off

| Weekly margin today 12 assignments, average $110/week margin each | $1,320 |
| --- | --- |
| Assignments ending by week 4 | 2 |
| Ending by week 8 | 5 (cumulative) |
| Ending by week 13 | 7 (cumulative) |
| Weekly margin at week 13, unweighted | $550 — down 58% |

Nothing here is a prediction. It is arithmetic on dates you already agreed. Whatever else happens, this is the shape you are working against.

Most people find the first version of this chart alarming, then reassure themselves that of course most of them will extend. That is probably true. The discipline is putting a number on “most”.

## Weight extensions with your own history

An extension probability pulled from optimism is worse than no forecast, because it produces a flat line that never warns you about anything.

Get the number from your own book. Go back over the last two years of assignments and count: of those that reached their original end date, how many extended? That single percentage is a better starting point than any judgement. Then split it where you have enough data to justify splitting:

- **By client.** The strongest signal by far. Some clients extend almost everyone; some genuinely run fixed projects and end on time. These behave very differently and averaging them hides both.
- **By how many times it has already extended.** A first extension is less likely than a third. Once a contractor is embedded, inertia works for you.
- **By whether the extension conversation has actually happened.** This is the one that turns a forecast into a management tool — see below.

Then weight each assignment's post-end-date weeks by its probability and re-draw the line. You now have two lines: the floor, and the expectation. The gap between them is your exposure, and it is the number worth reporting.

## Make the forecast drive a conversation

A weighted probability is a guess until somebody asks the client. So give each assignment approaching its end date a status rather than a percentage:

| Status | Means | Weight |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Confirmed | Extension agreed, dates and rate set | 100% |
| Verbal | Manager has said yes, nothing signed | 75% |
| Asked | Raised, awaiting an answer | Your base rate |
| Not raised | Nobody has asked yet | Base rate, minus a penalty |
| Ending | Confirmed finishing | 0% |

The penalty on “not raised” is the useful bit of design. It makes the forecast improve when somebody picks up the phone, which means the number on the wall goes up as a result of the behaviour you actually want. Any assignment inside three weeks of its end date and still marked not raised should be the loudest thing on the sheet.

Forecast in **margin**, not revenue. Two assignments billing the same amount can contribute very different profit, and a book that looks flat in revenue can be falling in margin as higher-spread assignments roll off and get replaced by thinner ones. Revenue forecasting on a contract desk is the specific mistake that hides a deteriorating book.

## What the chart is for

Lead time, and nothing else. A thirteen-week view does not change whether an assignment ends; it changes how long you have to react.

- **Twelve weeks out** — a visible dip is a sourcing plan. There is time to work a new requisition to placement.
- **Six weeks out** — it is an account conversation. What else does this client need, and can the contractor move sideways?
- **Three weeks out** — it is a re-deployment problem, and you are competing with everyone else who has noticed the contractor is becoming available.
- **At the end date** — it is a hole in next month's numbers and a contractor who has gone somewhere else.

The forecast does not make the book bigger. It moves the decision earlier, which is usually the same thing.

## One concentration check while you are in there

Same data, thirty seconds more: what share of your contract margin comes from your largest client? If it is above about a third, the run-off chart is not your main risk — a single client's budget review is. Worth knowing before it is tested, and worth knowing in margin terms rather than revenue.

In Echo Recruit

The dates are already in the system

Assignments carry effective-dated start and end dates and their own billable and payable rates, and margin is computed from the approved timesheet line rather than a rate card — which is what makes a margin forecast possible rather than a revenue one. Contract end dates generate tasks rather than sitting in a folder, so the extension conversation is prompted before week eleven instead of remembered after it. Revenue and margin are admin-only, refused at the database rather than hidden on the page.

## Common questions

How do you forecast a contract recruitment book?

Build the unweighted run-off first — what the book is worth if nothing extends and nothing is added. For each live assignment take weekly billable hours, bill rate, gross margin per hour and end date, then sum the margin still running in each of the next thirteen weeks. It is pessimistic by construction and contains no opinion.

Where should extension probability come from?

Your own history, not optimism. Go back two years: of the assignments that reached their original end date, how many extended? Then split by client — by far the strongest signal — by how many times it has already extended, and by whether the extension conversation has actually happened yet.

Should you forecast contract revenue or margin?

Margin. Two assignments billing the same amount can contribute very different profit, and a book that looks flat in revenue can be falling in margin as higher-spread assignments roll off and are replaced by thinner ones. Revenue forecasting on a contract desk is the specific mistake that hides a deteriorating book.

[View full post](https://www.echorecruit.com/blog/what-your-contract-book-is-worth-in-ninety-days)

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