FRACTIONAL CFO FOR IRRIGATION CONTRACTORS.
We manage the finance side for irrigation subcontractors doing $1M to $12M. You get job costing aligned to the way you estimate, a 13 week cash flow forecast, monthly WIP, and a CFO in the room every month. Pricing starts at $1,900 per month.
Irrigation installs a system and then decides, usually by accident, whether it owns the service book that follows. Service work has 30 to 40 percent gross margins on recurring contracts. Every install that goes out without an agreement gives that recurring work to whoever answers next spring's call, so the agreement has to be signed at install. We plan the year around two windows, spring startup and fall winterization, and size crew and compressor capacity against them. A missed blowout turns a $75 service call into a spring repair claim. Then we get scope boundaries in writing before the trencher moves. Inside a landscape package, sleeving, mainline routing and controller wiring always end up on whoever documented least.
SPM is a construction CFO for irrigation subcontractors from $1M to $12M in revenue. See how a fractional CFO for construction works month to month.
THE THREE THINGS THAT DRAIN THE CASH.
The Orphaned Install
Install a system without a service agreement and you give away 30-to-40-percent-gross-margin recurring work to whoever answers next spring's call. Get the agreement signed at install.
The Freeze Race
Startups and winterizations put the year's service revenue into two windows, capped by your crews and compressors. A missed blowout turns into a spring repair claim. Window capacity is the business plan.
The Package Seam
Install is part of landscape and sitework packages, where sleeving, routing and controller scope blur together. Put the boundaries in writing before the trencher moves. Whoever documented least ends up paying for the seam.
FROM 7% TO 10.5% NET.
At $1M to $5M, the average irrigation sub earns 22% gross margin and spends 15% of revenue on overhead. What's left is 7% net profit before taxes (Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference). The CFOS target is 10.5% before taxes. That is the irrigation average plus 3.5 points, and never below 10%. The book CONTROL's 12% is the rule of thumb across trades. It is not the industry average.
Two changes get you to the target. Overhead comes down 1 point to 14%, and gross margin comes up 2.5 points to 24.5%, so 24.5 minus 14 leaves 10.5. The gross margin points come from the three problems above, once you price them and bill for them. On a $3M year, every point is $30,000.
WHAT WE CHANGE.
These are the irrigation problems we put a number on first. Each one gets its own cost code, its own line on the schedule of values or its own line in the 13 week cash forecast, so you can read it in the monthly meeting while the job is still open.
- The service calendar is the business
- Backflow compliance
- Two-season cash
- Install economics under the landscape package
- Water management as the upsell layer
THE IRRIGATION GAP CALCULATOR. AVERAGE AGAINST TARGET, IN DOLLARS.
Put in your annual revenue. You get gross margin, overhead and net profit for irrigation contractors your size: the industry average and the CFOS target, in dollars a year. Nothing you type leaves this page.
Another trade too? The gap calculator for every trade.
Your figures show here once you put in your revenue.
Why aim for the target. An average is the middle of the pack: about half of companies do worse. And about 6 in 10 construction businesses close within 10 years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: about 40 percent of construction businesses opened in 2013 were still open in 2023). So the business in the middle is one of the ones that close. On those numbers, average is a business that closes within 10 years. That is why the CFOS target is a requirement.
Want your own numbers against these? The Financial Health Snapshot builds a CEO Report from your last 12 months and sets every figure against your trade.
YOU PAY ONE FLAT MONTHLY FEE.
The fee is set by your trailing 12 month revenue. We don't bill by the hour and we don't do payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is in the table too.
Type a number and your band and its prices show here. The full table is below.
Built for subs doing $1M to $12M. Above $12.5M we quote.
| Last 12 months revenue | Core | Strategic | Platinum | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 | $3,100 | $3,300 | $2,500 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 | $4,100 | $5,300 | $4,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 | $5,900 | $8,300 | $6,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 | $7,600 | $11,800 | $7,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 | $8,900 | $14,900 | $9,000 |
| Above $12.5M | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted |
The onboarding fee covers migrating your books back to the start of your last taxable year and getting you fully operational in 60 days. It's billed once, with your first invoice. It's the same for all three tiers, and it moves with your revenue band. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
Just want the setup? Onboarding only is the same onboarding work with no monthly service after it, one time, at the onboarding fee plus $2,000. Start a monthly engagement later and $2,000 counts toward it. It starts at $4,500, and the price for every band is on the pricing page.
The three tier columns are the whole price. Which one fits depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
- Online software only: QuickBooks, Sage, Viewpoint and similar. No VPN or hosted desktop.
- Not in any tier: payroll, pay applications, collections on receivables.
- Pricing valid through 2027.
What Core, Strategic and Platinum each include is on the pricing page.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
See the full benchmarks for every revenue band on Run On CFOS.
How irrigation CFO firms compare: the irrigation firm study, with every score and its source.
Irrigation is one of 14 trades in the sitework and civil family on our CFO for subcontractors page. Nearby trades with their own page:
