DOOR AND HARDWARE · INTERIORS AND FINISHES · FIXED BY STEP 01

Your job cost hides which opening groups lost money

You estimate per opening and purchase per SKU, so one hardware material bucket buries the difference between a passage set and an electrified mortise.

WHY IT'S A DOOR AND HARDWARE PROBLEM

The unit you sell and the unit you buy are two different objects, and the spread between them is wider here than in any other finish scope. A board sub buys sheets and sells square footage, and those two reconcile on their own. A per-opening estimate against SKU-level POs on mixed multipliers only reconciles if the cost codes are built to hold opening groups.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

You keep bidding electrified and fire-rated groups at the same effective markup as passage sets, and you keep losing money on the openings that should be priced hardest.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

13%

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 12%.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

19%

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 22%.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

Derived from Interiors, the nearest comparable trade. CFOS target 10%.

Your estimate is built per opening or per hardware set. Your purchase orders are line-item SKUs from three or four manufacturers, each on a different discount multiplier and each delivered in a separate shipment. Cost per opening inside one building spans roughly eight to one, from a hundred-dollar passage set to a twenty-five-hundred-dollar electrified mortise with credential readers. Roll all of that into one hardware material bucket and the classrooms subsidize the entries, with nothing on the report telling you it happened.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Split the hardware cost code into the groups you really bid: passage and privacy, classroom and storeroom, fire-rated, electrified, and exterior entries.

STEP 02

Have your distributor code POs and invoices to those groups on the way in, so coding stops being a month-end guessing exercise.

STEP 03

Close one finished job by group, compare each group's real cost per opening to what you bid, and price the next job off what that comparison shows.

THE FIX

Step 01: Job cost structure

Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words.

CFOS-01 · CHAPTER 1

Job cost codes that match how you bid the work

What this step changes, what it depends on, and how to tell it's installed.

BENCHMARKS

Door and hardware by revenue band

All 7 bands are published. The CFOS target is beside the figure up to $10M to $25M, and the 4 bands above that are labelled modeled.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

Cost codes the field ignores

You have 200 cost codes. The crews use four of them, and one is called Miscellaneous.

SAME TRADE

What else costs door and hardware contractors money

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-01

Your first frame is also your longest lead item

Welded hollow metal gets set during wall framing and takes the longest to buy of anything on your list. The money leaves months before there's a pay application to put it on.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-06

Two approval clocks come between you and the factory

Nothing releases to the factory until the hardware schedule submittal comes back and the keying conference happens. Neither clock starts when you sign.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-04

Manufacturer list letters reprice your bid three times

Your material has no spot price. It moves when a manufacturer mails a list-price letter, and in 2026 that happened in waves across thirty-plus brands.

DOOR AND HARDWARE · CFOS-06

One install line in the bid becomes three trips

Frames go in at framing, doors hang after paint, and hardware goes on at punch. That's three mobilizations, and most bids price one.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

DRYWALL

Level 5 gets discovered after the primer goes on

The spec said Level 4, the owner walked it at night with the wall washers on, and now there's a skim coat between you and your retention.

DRYWALL

Piece rate and square-foot bids agree on flat walls only

Your hangers make the same on a clean corridor as on a bathroom full of soffits, so guess which walls are done Friday and which ones aren't.

ELECTRICAL

You hit the hours and still lost money on the rate

You bid labor in unit hours and the field hit the unit hours. The loss lives in the dollars per hour you converted them at, and it moves the same direction on every job you take.

QUESTIONS

What door and hardware owners ask

Job costing hardware by opening group?

You estimate per opening and purchase per SKU, so one hardware material bucket buries the difference between a passage set and an electrified mortise.

What does it cost?

You keep bidding electrified and fire-rated groups at the same effective markup as passage sets, and you keep losing money on the openings that should be priced hardest.

What do I do first?

Split the hardware cost code into the groups you really bid: passage and privacy, classroom and storeroom, fire-rated, electrified, and exterior entries.

What are door and hardware contractors supposed to be making?

No survey separates door and hardware, so there is no figure of its own. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Interiors, which runs 19% gross margin, 13% overhead and 6% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M, with a CFOS target of 10% net. Those are derived figures, not door and hardware's own. Read them as the neighbourhood, and read your own job costing as the answer.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 01, job cost structure. Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words. It comes from chapter 1 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

OR HAVE IT HANDLED

Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for door and hardware contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.

What SPM The Construction CFO does, and what it costs

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

MASTER ELECTRICIAN · 150+ PROJECTS · $2.1B+ MANAGED

Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.