WHAT HAS TO EXIST AT $1M.
At a million dollars, guessing stops working. Below it, one person can keep the whole company in their head and be roughly right. At $1M you have enough jobs open at once, enough vendors, and enough payroll that the overhead rate in your bid has to be measured. A rate nobody measured is wrong, and it's wrong in the same direction on every job. Four things have to exist. You need an overhead rate rebuilt from the trailing twelve months, cost codes that match the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, and books closed by the tenth of the month. Almost everything else can wait.
At this size, the usual failure is a decision made from a number nobody checked. A subcontractor under $1M is below where published trade benchmarks start. You have no outside figure to compare against, so your own figure is the only one you have. Rebuild the overhead rate first. It prices every job, and it's the number most likely to be understated. Every number that comes after it has the same error, so correcting it first is worth more than anything else on this list.
Rather talk it through first? Book a 20 minute call. Nothing gets sold on this call.
Want Josh to check your own numbers? Financial Health Snapshot, $1,500 one time. Your last 12 months read against your trade's benchmarks, with a 60 minute readout.
WHAT IT MEANS.
The financial structure at $1M of revenue is the smallest set of controls that lets a subcontractor price work correctly and see a cash shortfall before it happens. There are four: a real overhead rate, job costing built against the estimate, a short cash forecast, and a monthly close on a set date.
Most of what a contractor at this size gets sold first can wait. You don't need an ERP, a controller, a project management platform, or a department yet. A correctly configured general ledger, with cost codes that line up with the estimate and a weekly cost review, beats a misconfigured construction ERP every time. Both produce the same report. Only one of them ties to how the work was priced.
You also don't need a full balance sheet program yet. You should know the four figures it will be judged on later, because they take years to build. The CONTROL standards are working capital at 10 to 15 percent of annual revenue, with 13 percent as the number to build toward, a current ratio between 1.3 and 2.0, and debt to equity below 1.0. Start on working capital at $1M. It's built from retained profit, and there's no shortcut.
THE FOUR THINGS THAT ARE MISSING.
The overhead rate was never calculated
You price from the last similar job plus a feel for the market. The overhead in the estimate is a number somebody chose once. Rebuilt from the trailing twelve months, it's almost always higher, because costs that belong in overhead get coded to job costs and other accounts where nobody looks for them. Every bid since then has had less cost in it than the business spends.
Cost codes don't line up with the estimate
Your books are organized the way an accountant organizes them. Your work was priced the way an estimator prices it. So the two records can't be compared, and nobody can tell whether the labor hours came in where they were bid. At this size that's the whole question. Job costing that can't be read against the estimate only tells you what already happened.
There's no forecast, and the books close whenever they close
You make cash decisions by looking at the bank account, and the account only shows what already happened. So a material deposit, a payroll, and a slow general contractor can all come in the same week, and nobody saw it coming. Numbers that are six weeks old can't change a bid, a payment cycle, or a hire either. If the close is late, every other control on this page stops being useful. The CONTROL standard is closed books and completed bank reconciliations by the tenth of the month, and a 13 week forecast built from that closing position.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Say a subcontractor at $1.1M of revenue puts 6 percent overhead in the estimate, and the trailing twelve months says 11 percent. Every bid has 5 points less cost in it than the business spends. Across $1.1M of work, that's $55,000 of overhead no job paid for. Both percentages are placeholders for the example, and neither one is a benchmark. Your real figure comes from your own trailing twelve months. It's usually understated because overhead costs get coded to job costs where nobody looks for them.
The CONTROL standard is books closed and bank reconciliations done by the tenth of the month. It's the cheapest control on this page and the one most often skipped. The 13 week forecast starts from the closing cash position, so it needs a current ledger before you can make decisions from it. Close by the tenth and you can trust the forecast. Miss the date and the forecast is a guess.
THE ORDER WE BUILD IT IN.
Before the rate can be rebuilt, the accounts have to stop mixing overhead into job costs and other lines. This comes first, because a rate calculated from a miscoded ledger is still a wrong number. It usually takes a couple of weeks, and it only gets done once.
The real rate gets calculated from the corrected accounts and loaded straight into estimating, along with a bid floor. Expect the corrected rate to be higher than the one you had. Expect to decline some work because of it. Work that can't cover the real cost of operating the business was never profitable, even when you won it.
Job costing gets set up so the cost record can be read against the way the job was priced, code by code. Then you can read labor production separately from material on every job. In most trades at this size, that's where the margin is. Everything else on this page reports through this job costing.
Books close by the tenth with bank reconciliations done. The 13 week forecast is built from the closing position every month. The close is the habit, and the forecast is what you decide from. With both, your bank balance becomes a plan. At $1M they replace roughly everything a contractor thinks they need software for.
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. We don't bill by the hour, and we don't do payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is in the table.
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.
CFO work. Your own bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
We build your plan every month. Your team does the work.
You get the CFO work: job costing built to match the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, WIP every month, and a monthly meeting that ends with decisions.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Core, plus bookkeeping and bank reconciliations, plus job costing and WIP software set up and managed for you. Use your own online accounting software or we supply it, one price.
We build the plan, track it and adjust it every month.
We only work with trade subcontractors. We know what to look for, and we fix problems while they're still small. 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 pay for it.
Our team does the bookkeeping and the reconciliations. We don't do payroll.
Strategic, plus a controller who handles payables and receivables the way an in-house controller would. You approve every payment.
We manage the money side for you, every week.
Everything in Strategic, plus our team does the controller work. We handle your bills and receivables the way an in-house controller would: we 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.
Our team does the payables and receivables. We don't do payroll, pay applications or collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
