THE JOBS ARE PROFITABLE. SO WHERE IS THE MONEY?
SPM The Construction CFO is the fractional CFO and construction accounting practice of Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, serving commercial subcontractors and self-performing general contractors doing $1M to $12M in revenue across the United States and Canada. It runs CFOS, a financial operating system covering job costing built against your own estimate, WIP reporting, the cash flow cycle, working capital, and trade benchmarking, and it is delivered as one engagement with the bookkeeping and controllership included so nothing falls through the cracks. Rates start at $1,900 per month and every band is published on this page. Founded and run by Josh Luebker, who managed more than 150 commercial projects worth over $2.1B combined as a project manager and master electrician before he did this.
Most contractors who call aren't in trouble. They're busy, their crews are good, and their general contractors want to keep using them. What they can't get is a straight answer about where the margin went, and by the time anyone looks, the job has closed and the crew is two jobs down the road. That is a structural problem, and it has a fix.
THREE THINGS OWNERS SAY IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES.
If one of these is close to something you've said out loud, the rest of this site is worth your time. If none of them is, it probably isn't, and that's a useful thing to learn in thirty seconds rather than on a call.
Profit and cash don't move on the same clock. You fund payroll, material, equipment, and lower tier subs on day one, then bill at month end, then wait on an approval, then wait on retainage. The P&L is describing a month that's over. What you need is the next 13 weeks, dated.
Cost codes built off a generic template produce blended totals, so a code running hot is averaged against one running under and the whole job reads normal until it closes. Cost codes built against your own estimating assemblies make the same posted hours readable in week two, against the rate you bid.
Because neither of them is looking at the job. Equipment, shop, and supervision usually sit in the wrong place on the P&L, which is why most contractors bid 10 percent overhead and run 18 to 28. Those dollars are spent on jobs and never charged to one, so every bid under-recovers until the rate carries them.
THE DRYWALL CRACKS BECAUSE OF WHAT IS UNDER THE SLAB.
Running a construction company is like owning a house that hasn't been appraised in 10 years. You know it's standing, because you're in it every day. You don't know what it's worth, and you don't know what 10 years of settling is going to cost you the week somebody finally looks.
Somebody dug a foot down on that house, hit soft clay, and poured the foundation on it anyway. The clay goes another three feet. It has been settling ever since, and the crack in the drywall is a symptom of dirt nobody looked at. Patch the crack and it opens again in 8 months, because the slab is still moving.
Money spent on the drywall is money spent twice. No contractor would patch the same crack a third time without going and looking at the base. He would get under the house. In his own business he does the opposite every time, because the cracks look like five separate problems and every one of them has its own obvious fix.
One concrete contractor doing $4.9 million was netting 3.3 percent and could not work out why. He did not raise his prices, change his crews, or work harder. He stopped throwing money at problems he could not see, and the same revenue with the same work went from $161,000 of net profit to $1,112,000.
Buys 90 days. The next job gets priced the same way as the last one.
Buys 3 weeks, at a rate nobody would sign for on a truck.
Collects what is owed. Does nothing to what the work was priced at.
Reports the same wrong overhead rate on a nicer screen.
This one makes it worse. More load on a settling slab means more cracks, and every new job carries the same bad number through it.
That last one is what puts companies under. A $4M contractor who books $6M on a broken costing structure loses money faster, with more crews, on jobs he had to fight to win. He didn't grow, he just added more stress.
Under the slab is the overhead rate, the cost codes, and the labor and equipment rates your bids come off. That is the first thing rebuilt here, and the 6 systems below are the order the rest of it happens in.
WE RAN THE WORK BEFORE WE RAN THE BOOKS.
Most fractional CFOs learned construction from a textbook. Both people here came off job sites, and that changes what gets built rather than just how it gets described. Job costing is aligned to how you estimate, so actuals compare to the number you bid. The forecast is built on your real pay application cycles and how each general contractor really pays. The overhead rate includes the equipment and the shop. And every monthly meeting ends in a short list of decisions rather than a report emailed over for you to interpret.
CFOS, IN 6 SYSTEMS.
CFOS is the Construction Financial Operating System, and it's the thing SPM installs. Each system answers one question an owner can't currently answer, and they're built in an order, because a cash forecast on top of bad job costing just gives you a confident wrong answer.
REAL BOOKS, REAL FIGURES.
Anonymized, because a contractor's financial position is his business and not our marketing. Every figure came off the client's own statements, and where a number couldn't be verified it is left out rather than estimated.
$310K Collected in 30 Days and the House Kept.
From Four Merchant Cash Advances to Debt Free.
$1.3M Less Revenue and More Profit.
THE RATE IS ON THE PAGE.
Nobody else in this category publishes one, and there's no good reason for that. A contractor comparing three firms shouldn't have to sit through three discovery calls to find out who is in his range. If the number below is wrong for your business you've saved a week, and if it is right the call is about the work instead of the price.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
48 TRADES, EACH WITH ITS OWN NUMBERS.
Gross margin, net profit before taxes, and overhead rate for every trade by revenue band, with the CFOS target beside each industry average and the sources cited under every table. It is published in full, it needs no email address, and the whole dataset is published as JSON and CSV under CC BY 4.0 because a benchmark nobody can check isn't a benchmark.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
