FRACTIONAL CFO FOR ROOFING CONTRACTORS.
We manage the finance side for roofing 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.
Roofing pays for material before the job starts and collects after somebody else approves, so we build your cash system around that backward cycle. Suppliers get paid at delivery and crews get paid Friday. Commercial pay applications come back at net-60 to net-90 with retainage on top. Storm work pays actual cash value first, holds recoverable depreciation until documented completion, and leaves supplements in an adjuster's queue. We price workers compensation into the hourly burden. Roofing has some of the highest comp rates in construction, and a bid built on wage alone underprices every hour worked. We also pull indirect labor out of the middle of the income statement. Supervisors, safety, warranty crews and drive time are neither direct labor nor overhead, and most roofing books never measure them.
SPM is a construction CFO for roofing 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 Carrier's Calendar
Storm work pays on the insurance company's schedule. ACV comes first, depreciation is held to completion, and supplements wait for weeks. You pay for the gap on every claim.
Material-First, Paid-Last
Suppliers get paid at delivery and crews get paid Friday. Commercial receivables come in at net-60 to net-90 with retainage. Your cash cycle is backward from day one.
The Thin Cushion
At 7 percent net before taxes for a $1M to $5M roofer, one delayed claim or one unmeasured indirect labor line wipes out the quarter. Margin this thin has no room for untracked cost.
FROM 7% TO 10.5% NET.
At $1M to $5M, the average roofing 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 roofing 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 roofing 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 insurance money trap
- Material-first economics
- Thin-cushion margins
- Collecting what you billed
- Seasonality with 12-month overhead
THE ROOFING GAP CALCULATOR. AVERAGE AGAINST TARGET, IN DOLLARS.
Put in your annual revenue. You get gross margin, overhead and net profit for roofing 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 roofing CFO firms compare: the roofing firm study, with every score and its source.
MORE PROBLEMS WE PUT A NUMBER ON.
Indirect labor creep
Indirect labor percentage roofing contractors benchmark
Supervisors, safety, warranty crews, and travel time fall between direct labor and overhead. When indirect labor isn't measured against revenue band, bids underprice it and the margin leaves through the middle of the income statement with no line item on it.
Roofing is one of 6 trades in the building envelope family on our CFO for subcontractors page. Nearby trades with their own page:
