Running a Temp Desk: Where the Margin Leaks and How to Plug It
A temp desk is a different animal from perm — the placement is the start of the work, not the end. Margin leaks through the operational cracks: late timesheets, pay-and-bill errors, compliance gaps, and unbilled hours. This is a practical guide to where a temp desk loses money and time, and how to run the operation tightly enough to keep the margin you earned.
On a perm desk, the placement is the finish line. On a temp desk, it is the starting gun. Every week that a contractor works, you have to capture their hours, get them approved, pay the worker (or their umbrella), invoice the client, and keep the compliance current — and you have to do it for every worker, every week, without error. Temp recruitment is fundamentally an operations game, and the margin you win at placement is quietly leaked back through the admin if the operation is loose.
Why temp margin is so easy to lose
Perm is high-value, low-frequency: a few big events. Temp is lower-value, high-frequency: hundreds of small recurring events — a timesheet here, an invoice there, a pay run every week. Small errors that would be trivial once become material when they repeat across dozens of workers every week. A margin that looks healthy on paper erodes through a hundred tiny operational leaks nobody is individually watching.
Perm margin is won at placement. Temp margin is won at placement and then defended every single week in the admin. Most desks win it and then leak it.
Leak one: timesheets
The timesheet is the atom of a temp desk, and it is where the most time and money leak. Chasing workers for late timesheets, chasing clients for approval, re-keying hours, correcting errors — it is relentless, and every delay pushes back your invoicing and therefore your cash. Worse, hours that are not captured are hours that are not billed: unrecorded overtime and missed timesheets are pure margin walking out the door.
Leak two: pay and bill errors
Pay-and-bill is where the different pay models — PAYE, umbrella, PSC — each route money differently, and where errors are both easy to make and expensive. Pay a worker the wrong rate, apply the wrong margin, miss a deduction, invoice the client incorrectly, and you have either lost money or lost trust. At volume, doing this by hand across multiple pay models is a near-guarantee of periodic error.
Leak three: knowing your real margin
Many temp desks do not actually know their margin per placement in real time — they find out at month-end, or worse, at year-end, by which point a loss-making assignment has been loss-making for months. Because margin depends on the pay route, the rate, and the deductions, it needs calculating correctly and continuously, not estimated. A desk that cannot see live margin per contractor is flying blind on its own profitability.
Leak four: compliance drift
Temp desks carry the heaviest compliance load in recruitment, and it is ongoing rather than one-off: Reg 15/17 documentation per assignment, Right to Work with follow-up checks as permissions expire, the Key Information Document reflecting the real pay route. A gap here is not just a margin leak — it is a liability. And because it is ongoing, it is exactly the kind of thing that slips on a busy desk unless the system tracks it.
The takeaway
A temp desk lives or dies in its operations. The margin you win at placement is defended — or lost — every week in the timesheet chase, the pay-and-bill accuracy, the visibility of real margin, and the ongoing compliance. Tighten those four and a temp desk becomes the reliable, compounding revenue engine it should be. Leave them loose and you will work hard for margin that quietly leaks away before it reaches the bottom line.