Run rate annualizes the present: annual run rate = current monthly figure × 12. A shop billing $40,000 a month is "on a $480K run rate". The same construction works for costs, and per engagement — a project billing $12,000 a month is a $144K/year engagement for as long as staffing holds.
It answers real questions quickly: can we afford the next hire, roughly what is the company's pace worth, is this quarter ahead of the last one. And it fails in predictable ways:
- Seasonality — multiplying an August (or a December) by 12 bakes a vacation dip into the whole year.
- One-offs — a spike month with a project kickoff fee ×12 is fiction.
- Contracts that end. The multiplication assumes every engagement continues at today's staffing; roll-off dates are exactly what it ignores.
- Signed versus delivered — a run rate built on plans rather than shipped, billable work flatters twice.
The discipline is naming: say "run rate" out loud, show the assumption, and pair it with the pipeline and the known roll-offs. Presented as a forecast, it becomes the number everyone remembers and delivery gets blamed for.
In Helia, the dashboard's money band and the profitability view compute a monthly billable-revenue run-rate — live billable assignments × their effective hourly rates, consolidated across currencies — and hold it against workforce cost for margin; the per-project and per-client margin lenses reuse the same run-rate basis.