Resources

Pick your trade and revenue band. Three targets, the shortfall you have, and the order to close it.

Benchmarks, labor burden, markup to margin, overbilling against payment terms, and retainage and payment laws by state, each with a dated answer and the credit to use.

All 48 trades across 7 bands, with sources and methodology.

Every figure unrounded, no company identified. What was wrong, why, and what changed.

20 working files: job cost codes, equipment rates, overhead, alignment, PM standards, cash flow, the lender WIP schedule and the CEO report skill.

Thirteen months, eleven charts, benchmarked to the trade. Built on invented figures so you can read it before giving up an address.

Gross profit on the project, net profit on the company, and cash on the balance sheet, in the order they come.

A range, not a number, because where you fall inside it is decided by how much of the work your own crews touch and how clean your cost codes are.

Twelve percent is above what every one of the benchmarked trades averages at $1M to $5M. That's the point of it. It's a target, and the published averages are what happens without one.

The figure comes from the working capital rule applied at one revenue size, and the rule scales to whatever size you are.

Zero is not zero. The floor a construction company has to hold is 3 to 6 months of fully burdened monthly operating expenses, and everything under it is a deficit that was never measured.

Growth does not fix a weak financial system, it magnifies it. Three tests that say whether you are stable enough to grow.

Straight knowledge on cash, cost and profit for subcontractors doing $1M to $100M+. Every issue so far, with the date it was published.

Crews are busy, the backlog is full and bids keep going out. At the end of the month the money is gone anyway, and the owner can't say where it went.

52 weeks divided by a 4 week billing cycle is 13 periods. What that does to the rate you charge for iron you already own.

What your trade reports at your size, what the CFOS target is, and why the number on your bid sheet doesn't match either one.

What your trade earns above direct cost at your size, and the margin the system is meant to maintain as a minimum.

What is left after all expenses, by trade and by size, and the number the system is built to reach.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

How the group compares on margin, overhead and net profit at $1M to $5M.

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

A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.

What indirect cost really comes to at your size, and the rate your estimating template should be using.

The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears.

Live job costs inside thirty seconds, with the bookkeeping cadence that keeps them current.

Billing dates, change orders, and notices, written as standards that work without anyone following up on them.

Weekly bookkeeping, cost to complete, and one CEO report, on the same days every month.

Five hours a month of owner time, spent projecting the work.

Your P&L says you made money and your bank account says you didn't. Neither is wrong.

You get paid when the GC gets paid, which means the GC's problems are now your problems.

Add up your retainage receivable. Compare it to your net profit for the year. They're usually about the same number.

If the overhead percentage in your estimating template is lower than your actual overhead, every job you win loses money before a single hour is worked.

The rate in your bid sheet was right once. Revenue doubled, you hired two PMs and a fleet, and the rate never got revisited.

The machine is paid for, so the jobs use it at no charge. Then the transmission goes and the year is gone.

The field did the work. The paperwork never caught up. Ninety days later there is no record that proves it happened.

Underbilling looks like a timing problem. Often it's a job that has gone over, and the PM has not said so yet.

You can compare the estimate to the job cost report, but the two use different words, so the comparison means nothing.

By the time the report is right, the job is closed and the only thing left to do is feel bad about it.

The best year you ever had on the income statement was the year you almost didn't make payroll.

You moved money on a Thursday night and kept it to yourself. It's happened more than once.

The stack on the corner of the desk is a financial statement. It just isn't a very good one.

It comes back as a fast yes when every other answer was slow. The daily draw starts before the job does.

The surety looks at working capital and equity. Both come from a clean close, and yours happens once a year in March.

If someone asked today which open jobs are over and by how much, the honest answer would take a week to produce.

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

You take draws when cash allows. That means your own pay is invisible in every bid you write.

Moving equipment in and getting the first crew productive costs real money that no line item on your bid covers.

The big jobs get watched. The small ones get fit in, and they never get costed out.

One general contractor is 40% of your year. Their payment terms are your payment terms, and their bad quarter is your bad quarter.

Two crews perform the same scope under the same conditions. One finishes ahead of the other, and your reports can't tell you which one it was.

You bid the material in March and buy it in September, and by then the price is nothing like the number you used.

You asked whether the Henderson job is making money. Three days later the answer was a printout of the P&L.

The workaround has a workaround. Someone maintains a spreadsheet that the whole company depends on.

The books get done once a year for the accountant. In between, you manage the company on the bank balance.

Your PMs are measured on schedule and on the client being happy. No role in the company is measured on the number at the bottom.

You know it's coming. Winter comes anyway, and every year the bank account takes it as a surprise.

The GC wants a number today. Getting one takes three days, so the work starts anyway and the price gets argued later.

You know your numbers. You don't know whether they're any good, because you've never seen anybody else's.

You know the wage. You don't know the burden, so every labor line in every estimate is a guess with a confident number on it.

You did another two million in work this year and kept the same money. The work wasn't the problem.

You estimate during the day and bill at nine at night, so the pay application misses the cutoff by one day and waits a month.

You checked the scope, the schedule, and the price. You didn't check whether this GC pays, and that's the term that decides the job.

You bid the job assuming the steel was worth something. Between the bid and the teardown, the price moved.

Your last productive day was in August. Release depends on vegetative cover, so the money doesn't reach you until next spring.

You can't legally dig until someone else marks the utilities, and if the marks are wrong you pay for the strike.

Switchgear and transformers are quoted in weeks that turn into quarters. You buy early to protect the schedule and fund it on your own money.

The submittal has been on the engineer's desk for five weeks. The lead time didn't pause while it waited there.

You priced the wire in February and you buy it in November. The metal price moves regardless of what you signed.

You set temp power before the slab and you're still there at closeout. Retention is held against all of it, the whole way.

Zero is not zero. If you do not know your New Zero, a balance above zero tells you nothing.

A line with no rules stops being a backstop and becomes the operating account.

Paying the wrong one first can put you back where you started, with less cash and the same problem.

Hiring before the work is contracted is the most common way a good year turns into a bad one.

Cutting blind takes out the thing that was producing revenue and leaves the thing that was not.

A machine you own can't be billed for a week it doesn't move, but the payment is still due every month.

Lien rights depend on notices going out on time, and in most companies no one is assigned to send them.

A finished job goes unpaid because the GC is unhappy about a different job, and the contract may decide who is right.

The crew did the extra work and the paperwork never caught up, so the cost stays on your job.

The sub's certificate of insurance expired or never came in, and the invoice is on your desk.

The waiver amount, the check and the pay application should agree, and in most companies three different people touch them.

Hours get written down somewhere, and by the time they reach the books the job and the cost code are guesses.

Job costing needs every cost on a job, and the stack of receipts is where most small companies stop.

The job is done and the crew keeps going back, because no one set when it ends.

The right number depends on the entity, the year and the strategy, and the CPA decides it.

Both roles work on the same job, so each one assumes the other has the contract, the buying and the billing.

The question usually means the job has no structure that says where each kind of cost belongs.

The company waits for the money, and the follow up only starts after the due date has passed.

The job is under way, the bid was too low and every week adds cost to a number no one checks.

Retainage stays on the job until someone asks for it, and no one is assigned to ask.

Whether it holds depends on your state and on the language you signed.

The estimator knows why the numbers are what they are, and the PM finds out in month three.

The report waits on late costs, unclosed books and managers who haven't reviewed their jobs.

The stress comes from not knowing which weeks are short until that week is here.

The estimator bids what comes in, because no one above them decided what the company should be bidding.

The scope in the contract differs from the scope that was bid, and the person who built the number finds out after the job starts.

A lost bid gets blamed on the estimator, and the company learns nothing about what was off or by how much.

Two structures decide what every report can say, and they often get set up by whoever has the software open.

A rental yard quotes a day rate, and the truck in your yard has no rate at all, so the job that used it pays nothing and the shop pays for it later.

Find the reason in writing, fix it, and check every pay app before it goes.

Put the due date on a calendar someone checks, and send early.

Build the SOV from the estimate, by cost code, and compare billing to cost monthly.

Get the GC's signature on the ticket the day the work happens.

Bill stored materials with the backup the contract requires, the month you buy them.

Agree on the measuring method and the quantity in writing before you bill.

Give billing a fixed day, a fixed owner and a simple trigger from the field.

Pick one person, one list and one weekly call, oldest invoice first.

Start the closeout list at mobilization and chase missing items before the work ends.

Add up open POs and subcontracts by job before the PM enters cost to complete.

Make the daily a two minute phone entry tied to billing.

Record each delay on the daily that day, then send notice.

Take percent complete from the PM's cost to complete, not from billing.

Tie every purchase to a PO and a job, then count leftovers.

Update cost to complete for the new end date every month.

Give every PM one form, one deadline, and one approval.

Code every job like your estimate and your own costs build up.

Compare your estimate's hours per unit to posted hours, then reset them.

Add a second quantity check before bigger bids go out.

Standardize cost codes and markup rules so every estimate compares.

Compare crew work to the estimate, then fix the template.

Win rate is bids won over bids sent. Track every bid.

Follow up a week after sending, and again before award.

Write rules for a good job and check each invite.

Backlog is contract value minus billed, added up by job.

Put each GC's contacts, history and payment habits on a shared list.

Give each seat only the jobs and numbers it needs.

Use one job list and one cost structure for every division.

Build WIP monthly from approved cost to complete.