Not all revenue is equally good. A brokerage's biggest account by revenue is often one of its thinnest by margin — the large enterprise shipper that drives volume but squeezes rate, versus the smaller account that quietly pays well. Looking at customers by revenue alone hides which relationships actually fund the business. This report ranks customers by margin, shows the margin rate per account, and separates big-but-thin loss-leaders from small-but-rich accounts.
What this report answers
Which customers produce the most margin, not just the most revenue? What's the margin rate on each account, and how does it vary by segment — Enterprise, Mid-Market, SMB? Where does revenue concentrate, and is the concentration in your best accounts or your thinnest? The Customer Leaderboard page ranks margin by customer and lays out a per-account table; the Account Quality page scatters revenue against margin rate to split big-but-thin from small-but-rich, and breaks margin down by customer segment.
The metrics that matter
Customer Gross Margin % is a SUM/SUM ratio so large and small accounts compare fairly. The revenue-versus-margin-rate scatter is the centerpiece: it puts every account in one of four quadrants — high revenue and high margin (protect), high revenue and thin margin (renegotiate), small and rich (grow), small and thin (deprioritize). Margin per Customer and Revenue per Customer give the per-account averages that anchor where a new or growing account should land.
Why the data is trapped
Revenue per customer is easy to pull from the TMS or QuickBooks, but margin per customer requires joining each load's sell rate to its carrier cost and rolling it up by shipper — something the TMS load list and the accounting AR view each only show half of. The result is that most brokers know their biggest customers by revenue but not by margin, which is the number that should drive account strategy. This template joins the two and ranks accounts by margin.
How to read it
Rank by margin dollars, then read margin rate beside it. Your largest-revenue account sitting at a thin margin rate is a renegotiation conversation, not a trophy. Use the scatter to find small-but-rich accounts worth growing and big-but-thin ones worth repricing, and watch segment mix — a book over-weighted to thin enterprise freight is lower-margin and more concentrated than it looks. The sample on this page uses entirely synthetic data — generic labels and made-up dollar figures, no real loads, carriers, or customers.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total Customer Revenue | Customer revenue across all loads. |
| Total Customer Margin $ | Gross margin dollars across all loads, viewable by customer. |
| Customer Gross Margin % | Total margin ÷ total revenue (SUM/SUM) — the blended margin rate across the customer book. |
| Active Customers | Distinct count of shippers with at least one load in the period. |
| Revenue per Customer | Total revenue ÷ active customers — average revenue per active shipper. |
| Margin per Customer | Total margin ÷ active customers — average margin per active shipper. |
Used by: Brokerage owners, sales leaders
Frequently asked questions
Why is my biggest customer often my thinnest-margin one?
Large enterprise shippers drive volume but use that leverage to squeeze rate, so they frequently carry the thinnest margin in the book. That's exactly why ranking customers by margin — not revenue — matters: the account that looks most important by revenue may be a loss-leader you're subsidizing with smaller, richer accounts.
What is account quality in freight brokerage?
Account quality combines how much revenue a customer drives with how much margin it actually pays. The revenue-versus-margin-rate view sorts accounts into protect (big and rich), renegotiate (big and thin), grow (small and rich), and deprioritize (small and thin) — a far better basis for account strategy than revenue ranking alone.
Can I build this on my own customer data?
Yes. Export your loads tagged by customer with revenue and carrier cost from your TMS, and you can add segment from your CRM — then use this as a template and we model it into a Power BI report. The sample uses synthetic data, so there are no real customers in what you see here.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Freight brokerages template — describe it and we’ll generate sample data so you can try it free, or upload your own export. You get a fully modeled, branded Power BI project that opens in Power BI Desktop.
Use this as a template →