BUILDING A BANKING RELATIONSHIP.
A strong banking relationship is worth more than a good credit score. Bankers who understand your business, trust your financial management, and know your track record approve credit faster, at better terms, and with fewer obstacles. Most subcontractors treat banking as a transaction. The ones who grow treat it as a relationship.
The credit decision is made by a person, and that person is reading your statements against everything else on his desk. A manufacturer's balance sheet reads clean. Yours has overbillings, underbillings, and retainage on it, and if he doesn't know what those are, he prices the confusion as risk. So the work is having good numbers and then teaching the banker how to read them. Contractors who do that once a year, whether they need money or not, get approvals in days instead of weeks.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A banking relationship is the ongoing working understanding between a contractor and a banker who knows the business, trusts its financial management, and can read a construction balance sheet without needing it explained.
WHY THE CREDIT DOES NOT COME THROUGH.
You only call your banker when you need money
The worst time to apply for a line of credit is the week you urgently need one. By then you're asking a banker who barely knows your business to approve credit fast, off financials he is seeing for the first time. Bankers approve credit for businesses they know and trust, not for businesses they're meeting for the first time.
Your banker doesn't understand construction
A banker who doesn't understand percentage of completion accounting, WIP schedules, retainage, or pay-when-paid terms will misread your financial statements. He will read overbillings as a liability he can't explain, underbillings as an asset that confuses him, and retainage as a line that doesn't belong on a balance sheet. Teaching him is your job, not his.
Your financial statements don't tell a good story
Even a healthy construction business can look risky to a banker who doesn't know the industry. How your statements get presented, explained, and backed up with WIP and backlog data decides whether the banker feels confident approving the request. The numbers can be fine and the presentation can still cost you the approval.
RESEARCH FROM OTHER SOURCES.
These figures come from another company's survey, not from SPM's clients. Each one cites the report and the page.
Billd's 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report found 42 percent of subcontractors secured capital before they needed to use it.
Source: Billd, 2026 National Subcontractor Market Report, page 10 (survey of 623 respondents, published May 13, 2026).
HOW THE RELATIONSHIP GETS BUILT.
Start with a relationship meeting instead of a credit application. Bring your financial statements, your WIP schedule, and a 12-month revenue history. Walk the banker through the business, how construction accounting works, what your backlog looks like, and why the financial picture makes sense. Do this once a year even when you don't need anything from him.
We build the meeting package for clients whenever a banking meeting is scheduled, so the meeting isn't a scramble the night before. Everything in it comes out of the monthly close rather than getting assembled from scratch. The banker gets one clean set of documents that agree with each other, which is most of what he is looking for.
The profile that gets credit approved is clean books, accurate WIP, healthy ratios, and documented backlog. That's what we build and maintain every month for every client, on every tier. When you need a facility the package is ready, and when the banker calls for a quarterly update the numbers are current and the story is clean.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
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. No payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is right here in the table.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 to $3,300 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $5,300 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $8,300 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $11,800 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $14,900 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $17,650 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $22,400 | $9,000 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually | Quoted individually |
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. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
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. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
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 and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
Everything in Core, plus the bookkeeping and bank reconciliations done for you, and the job costing and WIP software set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed every month. Use your own online software, or move to ours and we cover it.
A bookkeeper we choose does the books and reconciliations. No payroll.
You approve, and the money side gets handled.
Everything in Strategic, plus a controller we choose who handles your bills and receivables for you the way an in-house controller would. They call vendors, pay the bills and keep the accounting current. We plan the cash flow first, and you approve every payment because it is your money.
A controller we choose does the payables and receivables. No payroll, no pay applications, no collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
