Everybody in the company can see everything
Give each seat only the jobs and numbers it needs.
In many contractors, the permissions were set when the company was small and everybody did a bit of everything. Now the foreman can see payroll, the estimator can see overhead, and any PM can open a job they have nothing to do with. Nobody did anything wrong, but pay rates, margins, and bids are sensitive, and a company that's grown past thirty people shouldn't rely on trust alone. It also gets worse once people ask Claude or ChatGPT about the numbers, because an assistant reading an open system answers with everything. Limiting access is a control that auditors, sureties, and banks like to see.
Three moves, in order
What CFOS does about it
CFOS has roles and permissions per person, down to which jobs and which numbers they see. A PM sees their jobs, a foreman sees dailies and time for their crew, and the controller sees the books. Everyone sees what their job needs and nothing more, including when they ask Claude or ChatGPT about your jobs, because the assistant sees only what that person's sign in allows and can't change anything. CFOS also works on top of QuickBooks Online, so you can limit who needs a QuickBooks seat at all.
Who owns this: Controller.
At $20M, you have a dozen PMs and a field staff. A role based list takes an afternoon to set up. After that you stop asking who can see what.
We email you when CFOS for QuickBooks opens, plus a few updates before then. Your address stays with Run On CFOS. One click unsubscribes.
30 days free, a 90-day money-back guarantee, and cancel anytime. It opens January 2027. We email you the day it opens.
Step 08: Standards and accountability
Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work.
Other problems step 08 solves
Other things that go wrong
What owners ask
Construction software user permissions?
Give each seat only the jobs and numbers it needs. In many contractors, the permissions were set when the company was small and everybody did a bit of everything. Now the foreman can see payroll, the estimator can see overhead, and any PM can open a job they have nothing to do with. Nobody did anything wrong, but pay rates, margins, and bids are sensitive, and a company that's grown past thirty people shouldn't rely on trust alone. It also gets worse once people ask Claude or ChatGPT about the numbers, because an assistant reading an open system answers with everything. Limiting access is a control that auditors, sureties, and banks like to see.
Which part of the system fixes this?
The step is number 08, standards and accountability. Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work. It's drawn from chapter 8 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.
Is this normal for my trade?
Across the 48 trades that publish a figure, net profit at $1M to $5M averages 7% before taxes. If you're well under that and this page describes your month, the two are usually the same story. The published average tells you where the pack is, and your own job costing tells you where you are, which is the number that pays payroll.
Where do I start?
List every person with a login to your accounting and job systems and write the role each one actually has, including part time and former staff.
Which numbers should PMs not see?
That's your call. Most companies keep company wide overhead, owner compensation, and other people's payroll rates away from PMs. A PM should see the budget, cost, billing, and cost to complete on their own jobs.
Does an AI assistant see more than the person asking?
Not in CFOS. When someone asks Claude or ChatGPT about your jobs, it reads only what that person's sign in allows, and it can't change anything. If a PM can't open a job, the assistant can't tell them about it.
Can I fix this without touching anything else?
You can try, and it doesn't hold. Step 08 depends on step 03, overhead calculation and step 06, project management and step 07, monthly cadence. Install it ahead of those and it produces numbers the field won't trust, which is worse than the problem you started with.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.