YOUR BUSINESS HAS NO BACKLOG. MOST CFO ADVICE ASSUMES IT DOES.
A service business runs on a contract book, a fleet, and a technician's billable hours. It has none of the instruments construction finance is built around. So the questions change: what a truck costs per day, which agreements make money, how much drive time is eating capacity, and whether the service side is funding the project side without anybody seeing it. Those are answerable, and most service owners have never seen the answers.
The confusion is understandable, because a service company and a project contractor look identical from the outside. Same trucks, same trades, same licences, often the same owner. Inside the books they behave nothing alike. A project contractor's risk sits in a handful of large commitments; a service company's risk sits in three hundred small ones renewing on their own schedules. Advice written for the first one won't just miss for the second, it will point at instruments that don't exist.
WHAT IT MEANS.
The CFOS Service Business Operating System is SPM's system rebuilt for companies that bill recurring agreements and work orders rather than projects, where there's no backlog to burn down, no schedule of values to bill against, no retainage to chase, and no work in progress schedule to reconcile.
WHY THE USUAL ADVICE DOES NOT FIT.
There Is No Backlog to Read
A project contractor forecasts off signed work not yet performed, and every lender, surety, and buyer reads that number first. A service business has no equivalent. Its forward view is a contract book that renews or churns, which behaves like a subscription rather than a queue. An owner managing a service company off a backlog mindset is watching for a number that will never exist, and missing the one that decides the year.
The Costing Grain Is Wrong by Two Orders of Magnitude
Job costing tracks a few large jobs across months. A service business closes thousands of work orders across days. Applying full job costing discipline at that grain produces an administrative burden nobody sustains, and abandoning it produces a blended P&L that hides every losing agreement inside a profitable month. The unit of costing has to change while the discipline stays the same.
Capacity Is Measured In Trucks
The binding constraint in a service business is how many trucks are rolling and how much of each technician's paid day is billable. Drive time is the largest uncosted expense in most of these companies, and it appears on no report because nobody codes it. A project contractor can win margin back with a change order. A service company gets it back by tightening a route, and only if somebody is measuring the route.
WHAT WE BUILT INSTEAD.
Each guide below covers one part of the system that had to be rebuilt for service work. Start with the first if the whole distinction is new; jump to the one describing your week if it's not.
- Recurring Revenue vs BacklogA service business has no backlog to burn down.
- Work Order Costing vs Job CostingProject costing tracks a few big jobs across months.
- Per-Agreement ProfitabilityA blended P&L nets winning service agreements against losing ones and reports the average.
- Cost Per Truck Per DayThe fully burdened daily cost of one truck sets the price floor under every work order.
- Route Density and Drive TimeDrive time is the largest uncosted expense in most service work.
- Is Service Subsidizing ProjectsMost mixed contractors can't say whether service funds the projects or the projects eat service.
THE NUMBER WE WILL NOT GIVE YOU.
We publish gross margin, net profit, and overhead benchmarks for 48 construction trades across seven revenue bands, and we don't publish a single one for service businesses. That's deliberate. Labour rates, drive time, competitive density, and what a market will pay for a recurring agreement vary more between two metros than they do between two trades. A national service margin is wrong somewhere before it's printed.
So there's no service benchmark table on this site, and you should be careful with anyone who offers you one. What we build instead is your own baseline, out of your own contract book, your own cost per truck per day, and your own billable hour ratio. It's less comfortable than an average and considerably more useful, because it's the only form of the number that was ever true where you operate.
Not everything changes. Cash still moves before profit does, so the 13 week forecast is the same instrument here as anywhere. Books still close by the tenth. Working capital still belongs at 10 to 15 percent of annual revenue, and a service business with a healthy contract book and no reserve is as exposed as a contractor with a full backlog and no cash. The balance sheet discipline transfers intact. It's the operating reports that had to be rebuilt.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing and no payroll.
Pricing
| 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.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
