FRACTIONAL CFO FOR PRECAST CONCRETE CONTRACTORS.
We manage the finance side for precast concrete 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.
Precast is a factory that gets paid like a subcontractor, so first we fix who pays for the yard. You pay at casting, and construction terms pay you at delivery and erection. Every finished piece in the yard is your working capital. Stored-materials billing with insurance, marking and inspection provisions decides whose cash it is. Next we build bed-day cost rates and a mould amortization schedule. Plant capacity is beds and moulds, and without those rates a plant prices by feel. Then we put design-freeze milestones in the contract, with re-cast priced as a change order. A field change on cast-in-place concrete is a saw cut. On precast it's a scrapped piece and a re-booked bed.
SPM is a construction CFO for precast concrete 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 Concrete Warehouse
You pay for a piece when you cast it. Construction terms pay you at delivery and erection. Every finished piece in the yard is your cash, and the stored-materials billing clause decides who pays for the wait.
The Idle Bed
Your plant capacity is beds and moulds, and unit cost follows how much you use them. Equipment breakdown is the top documented source of variance. Without bed-day cost rates, you're pricing by feel.
The Re-Cast Change
A late design change on precast can mean a scrapped piece, a re-booked bed and a new erection sequence. Design-freeze gates and change orders priced at re-cast cost are the clauses that protect you.
FROM 7% TO 10.5% NET.
At $1M to $5M, the average precast concrete 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 precast concrete 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 precast concrete 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.
- A factory paid like a subcontractor
- Bed and mould utilization
- The transport radius
- Design freeze and the change that re-casts
- Erection day is marine-grade choreography
THE PRECAST CONCRETE GAP CALCULATOR. AVERAGE AGAINST TARGET, IN DOLLARS.
Put in your annual revenue. You get gross margin, overhead and net profit for precast concrete 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 precast concrete CFO firms compare: the precast concrete firm study, with every score and its source.
Precast Concrete is one of 8 trades in the concrete and structure family on our CFO for subcontractors page. Nearby trades with their own page:
