A fee-only customs brokerage must support its staff with separately earned service fees. In this fictional case, client duties, imported-goods value and client funds are excluded from revenue. The planned monthly workload is one pool of service jobs; an included filing cannot also become another billable job within the same agreed scope.
Prove which jobs are separately authorized and collectible before counting the fee pool. Large shipments or client disbursements cannot substitute for enough earned brokerage contribution.
What belongs in fee revenue?
The case is an independent service-only brokerage in Houston, providing electronic service to US ports during January 2027–December 2029. It excludes warehousing, freight carriage, bond underwriting, duty advances and ownership of imported goods. These exclusions define this scenario; they are not a statement of regulatory permissions.
Thirty assumed billed accounts each request six separately billable service jobs monthly, yielding 180 expected jobs before ramp. The job mix divides that pool once. An ISF or correction included in an entry engagement cannot also be counted as a separate fee merely because it appears as another task in the workflow.
How do separate jobs produce the monthly fee pool?
The full-ramp table multiplies each exclusive service allocation by its scenario fee. The resulting $34,200.00 is earned service revenue, not cargo value or money collected for another party. The displayed fees are illustrative inputs rather than current broker quotations.
A job pool is a demand assumption. Although the forecasting inputs carry the same monthly ceiling as each selected job allocation, the case does not establish an independent operational capacity study. Real document complexity, exceptions and filing coverage still need to be tested against the paid roster.
| Separately billed scope | Jobs/month | Fee/job | Earned fees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard entry | 81 | $200.00 | $16,200.00 |
| Complex entry | 27 | $350.00 | $9,450.00 |
| ISF filing | 36 | $50.00 | $1,800.00 |
| AES filing | 18 | $150.00 | $2,700.00 |
| Classification | 9 | $250.00 | $2,250.00 |
| Corrections | 9 | $200.00 | $1,800.00 |
Which paid work must the fee pool support?
The retained roster includes the compensated owner broker, half-time other broker coverage, two entry specialists and half-time billing support. Fractional rows are prorated pay budgets; they do not mean additional full-time staff. Exceptions, missing client documents, quality review, billing and collections have to fit that coverage.
Direct service purchases consume 7% of earned fees. Payment, invoice-loss buffer and referral allowances are additional operating expenses. At full ramp, March EBITDA is $1,248.76, but the first operating year’s net income is -$21,882.28. A positive full-ramp month does not erase the opening period’s paid cost.
Why must client money remain outside the runway?
The saved forecast assumes 24 collection days, no supplier delay and no inventory. It contains no duty advances or client-money float. A client’s large duty payment therefore cannot be used to improve the practice’s operating revenue or its modeled available reserve.
Proposed uncommitted equity of $143,082.00 funds startup uses of $23,000.00 and opening liquidity; no debt is modeled. Minimum forecast cash is $65,499.54. Those numbers describe the brokerage’s scenario cash, conditional on its funding, and provide no evidence that another party’s funds are available for payroll.
What should an account-level test establish?
Create a service catalogue for a real account that distinguishes the included entry package from separately authorized extra work. For each job, retain its accepted fee, actual specialist effort, exceptions, purchased inputs and collection date. Reconcile job counts across the catalogue so one task cannot inflate several categories.
Then check whether the paid roster can complete the expected mix and whether its collected contribution covers support work. If account requests are mostly included tasks rather than separate jobs, reduce the billable job assumption before making a staffing or lease commitment.
Make the next decision with your own evidence
Reconcile an actual account’s service catalogue to separately accepted jobs, full paid effort and collection dates, keeping duties and all client-money movements outside earned fee revenue.
Explore published business plan examples ↗PortLedger Brokerage is a fictional prelaunch scenario prepared with AI assistance. Inputs are illustrative; forecast results come from the matching saved financial model. Funding is proposed. The diagrams explain the case and do not depict actual premises, established demand or promised earnings. Replace the assumptions with evidence before committing.
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