FRACTIONAL CFO FOR PAINTING CONTRACTORS.
We manage the finance side for painting 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.
Painting is labor with a thin material line on top, so crew production per hour is nearly your whole margin. Interior work priced $2 to $6 a square foot in 2026 and exteriors $1.50 to $4. The spread between those comes from prep condition, ceiling height and crew efficiency. Without production history, you're quoting a range. We walk surface conditions before the bid and code prep apart from finish, because the hours before the paint are the job. Then we negotiate line-item retention release. Painting finishes last, and a 10 percent hold is double the 5 percent net before taxes a typical painting contractor earns.
SPM is a construction CFO for painting 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 Last-Trade Hold
Painting finishes last. So you wait on everyone's punch list for a retainage release that's bigger than your 5 percent net margin before taxes. Line-item release language fixes that, and most painters never ask for it.
The Punch That Never Ends
At closeout, new scope gets called "touch-ups." Without a punch-versus-change-order log and photos, you repaint the building's last month for free.
The Production Equation
Labor is nearly the whole cost, so untracked crew production per hour is untracked margin. The spread between $2 and $6 per square foot is prep, height and efficiency. Only your tracked history prices it.
FROM 5% TO 10% NET.
At $1M to $5M, the average painting sub earns 18% gross margin and spends 13% of revenue on overhead. What's left is 5% net profit before taxes (Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference). The CFOS target is 10% before taxes. That is the painting 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 12%, and gross margin comes up 4 points to 22%, so 22 minus 12 leaves 10. 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 painting 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.
- Last trade on the job
- Punch list scope creep
- Production rates are the whole business
- The prep trap
- Warranty tail and callback reserve
THE PAINTING GAP CALCULATOR. AVERAGE AGAINST TARGET, IN DOLLARS.
Put in your annual revenue. You get gross margin, overhead and net profit for painting 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 painting CFO firms compare: the painting firm study, with every score and its source.
Painting is one of 6 trades in the interiors and finishes family on our CFO for subcontractors page. Nearby trades with their own page:
