THE HIRING PLAN IN DOLLARS.
One hire is an affordability question and a hiring plan is a sequencing question, and they get answered differently. Every role above field labor raises the overhead rate from the first pay cycle, and the corrected rate has to be reloaded into the bid template before the next bid goes out or the increase gets absorbed instead of recovered. Three hires in the same year stack that increase three times while the revenue they enable comes in later and unevenly. So the plan needs an order, a fully burdened cost per role, a revenue breakeven per role, and enough cash to carry the whole ramp at once. Run it as one model rather than as three separate decisions.
The trap in a hiring plan is that each hire looks affordable on its own. A project manager pencils out, a second estimator pencils out, an office role pencils out, and not one of the three calculations included the other two. Then all three are on payroll, the bid template still carries last year's overhead rate, and the business is pricing work against a cost structure it no longer has. Sequence beats speed here. One hire installed, the rate corrected, the revenue confirmed, and only then the next offer.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A hiring plan financial model is the arithmetic that puts every planned hire in order, prices each one fully burdened, states the revenue each has to produce to pay for itself, and checks whether the cash exists to carry all of them until that revenue comes in.
There's also a category of hire being asked to fix something a hire can't fix. Bringing somebody into the office because nobody knows what the jobs earn doesn't produce job costing, it produces a person sitting inside a system that doesn't report. Correct the reporting first and the role that's genuinely needed is usually smaller and cheaper than the one that was about to be hired. That's the single most expensive hiring mistake we see, because the salary is permanent and the problem is still there.
The burden number is where most plans go wrong before the sequencing does. Payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits add 30 to 50 percent on top of base pay, and the workers comp component varies enormously by classification, so a field role and an office role at the same base pay don't cost the same. Price every role off its own burden rather than off one company average, and price the whole plan before the first offer.
WHY THE PLAN COSTS MORE THAN THE HIRES.
Each hire is priced alone, so the plan is never priced
Three calculations run at three different times, each one against the overhead the company had before the other two. Individually every answer was correct. Together they understate the increase and overstate the capacity, and nobody sees it until the overhead line on the profit and loss has moved and the bids that were supposed to carry it were priced months ago.
The bid template keeps the old overhead rate
A hire raises the overhead rate in the first pay cycle and the rate inside estimating changes when somebody remembers to change it. Every bid submitted in between prices work against a cost structure that no longer exists, and every one of those bids that wins locks the error in for the length of the job. The reload is a five minute task that nobody owns.
The ramp gets funded out of the operating account
The cost of a hire starts in week one and the revenue they enable depends on bids not yet won and jobs not yet started. That distance is a working capital requirement, and funding it out of whatever is in the account means the plan competes with mobilization and material buyout on the same Friday. Three ramps at once is three of those competitions running simultaneously.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take a subcontractor carrying $600,000 of annual overhead and, as a placeholder, a gross margin rate of 24 percent. Three planned hires carry base pay of $100,000, $80,000, and $40,000. None of those three is what any role pays, they're placeholder inputs so the arithmetic is visible. At a burden of 35 percent, which sits inside the 30 to 50 percent that payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits add on top of base, the fully burdened cost of the three is $135,000, $108,000, and $54,000, which totals $297,000. Overhead moves from $600,000 to $897,000. Divide the $297,000 by the 0.24 margin rate and the three together have to produce $1,237,500 of additional revenue to pay for themselves. Run the same arithmetic against your own overhead, your own margin rate, and your own offers.
Install one hire, reload the corrected overhead rate into estimating, and confirm the revenue before the second offer goes out. That order costs a few months of speed, and it means the second decision gets made from measured figures and not from the same forecast that justified the first. It also gives you a live answer to the only question that counts here, which is whether the last hire paid for itself.
ONE MODEL, NOT THREE DECISIONS.
Every planned role goes into a single model with its own burden, its own start month, and its own revenue breakeven, and the model reports the cumulative overhead increase and the cumulative revenue requirement. That total is the number the decision gets made on. Three separate calculations always produce a smaller number than the truth, which is why they're popular.
The corrected rate goes into the bid template in the same month the hire starts, not at the next annual review, and the bid floor moves with it. That's what turns a hire from a cost into a recovered cost. Skip it and the hire is funded out of margin on every job you win until somebody notices.
Each start date goes into the 13 week forecast alongside the real billing and payroll calendar, so the plan gets checked against the cash weeks it falls in and not against an annual average. Where the forecast won't carry two hires in the same quarter, the start dates move. That's a cheaper answer than a missed payroll.
Whatever the hire was supposed to unlock gets measured after they start: bid volume, win rate, jobs run at once, or hours recovered from the owner. Without that, the next hiring decision gets made on the same feel as the last one. With it, you know whether the plan is working before you commit to the next salary.
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, and no add-ons.
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.
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