Self-hosted project costing.
Ekso is self-hosted project costing software that tracks margin, cost, and revenue per project, team, client, and cycle — on your own infrastructure, with no spreadsheet exports required. Job role rate cards and cost centres sit alongside tasks and time logs in a single workspace. Pricing is flat-rate for unlimited users. Financial data is queryable in real time via the built-in Insights feature or by AI agents using the 104-tool MCP server.
Last reviewed May 2026
Time connects to financial reporting automatically
Ekso connects time tracking directly to financial reporting. Every task in a project is associated with a team member who has an assigned job role. Each job role carries a cost rate (what the role costs the business per hour) and a bill rate (what is charged to the client). As time is logged against tasks, Ekso calculates projected cost, logged cost, estimated revenue, logged revenue, and gross margin — automatically, in real time, without export.
“What made us money this quarter?” is a column in a table. Not a Wednesday morning spreadsheet exercise.
Companies we've delivered for
Financial data Ekso tracks per project
| Metric | Description | Available at |
|---|---|---|
| Total hours | All hours logged against the project | Project, cycle, team, role |
| Billable hours | Hours marked as billable to a client | Project, cycle, team, role |
| Non-billable hours | Internal or overhead time | Project, team |
| Estimated cost | Projected cost based on planned hours × cost rate | Project, cycle |
| Logged cost | Actual cost from time logged × cost rate | Project, cycle, team, role |
| Estimated revenue | Projected revenue from planned hours × bill rate | Project, cycle |
| Logged revenue | Actual revenue from time logged × bill rate | Project, cycle, team, role |
| Gross margin % | (Logged revenue − logged cost) / logged revenue | Project, cycle, team, role, client |
| Budget burn | Logged cost vs budget target | Project, cycle |
| Capacity utilisation | Logged hours vs available capacity | Team, role |
How rate cards work
Rate cards in Ekso are configured at the job role level. Each role has a cost rate and a bill rate defined in the workspace settings. When a team member logs time, Ekso looks up their assigned job role and applies the relevant rates to calculate cost and revenue contributions. Bill rates can be overridden at the project or client level to support variable pricing models. Changes to rate cards apply prospectively; historical logs retain their original rates.
Commercially sensitive data stays inside
Project costing data is commercially sensitive — it contains margin information, client billing rates, staff cost rates, and profitability by team or individual. Self-hosting keeps this data within your own infrastructure. Ekso is not in the data path, so your financial reporting data is governed by your own access controls and compliance policies, not a vendor’s data processing agreement.
GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and DORA compliance is achieved through your own infrastructure boundary. Air-gapped deployment is supported.
Query financial data with AI agents
Ekso ships with a 104-tool MCP server in the standard installation. Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and any MCP-compatible agent can query financial data directly:
- “Which boards are over budget this quarter?”
- “What is the gross margin on the ACME project?”
- “Which job roles are driving the highest cost in the Support team?”
- “Who is overbooked next month and what does that cost us?”
Results are returned as structured data tables, not chatbot prose. Users bring their own AI model keys — Anthropic, OpenAI, or Azure Foundry.
Flat-rate. Costing included.
Ekso charges a flat-rate annual licence with no per-seat fees and no additional charge for financial reporting features. Project costing, rate cards, cost centres, margin reporting, and AI querying are all included in the standard installation.
Frequently asked questions
Self-hosted project costing software tracks cost, revenue, and margin per project on your own infrastructure. Ekso connects time logs to job role rate cards to produce live financial data — margin per project, team, and client — without exporting to a spreadsheet.
Ekso multiplies logged hours against job role rate cards to calculate cost and revenue. Rate cards define cost rates (internal cost per hour) and bill rates (client charge per hour). Time logged against tasks feeds the cost model automatically, producing projected and logged cost, revenue, and gross margin in real time.
Yes. Job roles, rate cards, cost centres, and budget targets are configured in Ekso once. As team members log time, financial data updates automatically. Questions like “which projects are over budget” are answered by querying the workspace directly, via Insights or via AI agents using the MCP server.
Ekso reports on total hours, billable hours, estimated and logged cost, estimated and logged revenue, gross margin percentage, budget burn, and capacity utilisation — per project, cycle, team, job role, and client.
Yes. Bill rates are set at job role level and can be overridden at the project or client level, supporting variable pricing models across multiple clients simultaneously.
Yes. Ekso’s 104-tool MCP server allows Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and any MCP-compatible agent to query project financial data directly, returning structured tables for questions about budget, margin, cost, and utilisation.