THE HIRING PLAN IN DOLLARS.
With one hire, the question is whether you can afford it. With a hiring plan, the question is what order the hires go in. Every role above field labor raises your overhead rate from the first pay cycle. The corrected rate has to go into the bid template before the next bid goes out, or your bids don't recover the increase. Three hires in the same year raise the rate three times, and 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 fund the whole ramp at once. Build it as one model.
In a hiring plan, each hire looks affordable by itself. The math works for a project manager. It works for a second estimator and for an office role. None of the three calculations included the other two. Then all three are on payroll, the bid template still has last year's overhead rate, and you're pricing work against costs you no longer have. Go in order. Make one hire, correct the rate, confirm the revenue, and then make the next offer.
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WHAT IT MEANS.
A hiring plan financial model is the math 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 fund all of them until that revenue comes in.
Some hires get asked to fix a problem a hire can't fix. Say you bring somebody into the office because nobody knows what the jobs earn. Now you have a person working inside a system that still doesn't report. Correct the reporting first. The role you need after that is usually smaller and cheaper than the one you were about to fill. It's the most expensive hiring mistake we see, because the salary is permanent and the problem is still there.
Most plans get the burden number wrong before they get the order wrong. Payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits add 30 to 50 percent on top of base pay. Workers comp varies a lot by classification, so a field role and an office role at the same base pay don't cost the same. Price every role with its own burden, 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
You do three calculations at three different times, each one against the overhead the company had before the other two hires. Each answer was correct by itself. Together they understate the increase and overstate the capacity. Nobody sees it until the overhead line on the profit and loss has gone up, and the bids that were supposed to cover it were priced months ago.
The bid template keeps the old overhead rate
A hire raises the overhead rate in the first pay cycle. The rate inside estimating changes when somebody remembers to change it. Every bid submitted in between prices work against costs the company no longer has. Every one of those bids you win keeps the error for the length of the job. Updating the rate 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. The revenue they enable depends on bids you haven't won and jobs you haven't started. You need working capital to cover the time between the two. If you fund it from whatever is in the account, the hire competes with mobilization and material buyout for the same cash on the same Friday. Three hires ramping at once means three of those at the same time.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take a subcontractor with $600,000 of annual overhead and, as a placeholder, a gross margin rate of 24 percent. Three planned hires have base pay of $100,000, $80,000, and $40,000. All three are placeholder inputs to show the math, and none of them is what any role pays. Use a burden of 35 percent. That's 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 goes from $600,000 to $897,000. Divide the $297,000 by the 0.24 margin rate. The three together have to produce $1,237,500 of additional revenue to pay for themselves. Do the same math with your own overhead, your own margin rate, and your own offers.
Make one hire, put the corrected overhead rate into estimating, and confirm the revenue before the second offer goes out. That order costs you a few months. In return, you make the second decision from measured figures. It also tells you whether the last hire paid for itself, which is the only question that counts here.
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. The model reports the cumulative overhead increase and the cumulative revenue requirement. You make the decision from that total. Three separate calculations always produce a smaller number than the real one.
The corrected rate goes into the bid template in the same month the hire starts, and the bid floor changes with it. Then your bids recover the cost of the hire. Skip it and the hire is paid for out of your 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. That checks the plan against the cash you'll have in those weeks. Where the forecast won't support two hires in the same quarter, the start dates move. Moving a start date costs less than a missed payroll.
Whatever the hire was supposed to add gets measured after they start. That could be bid volume, win rate, jobs active at once, or hours the owner gets back. If you skip it, you make the next hiring decision on the same feel as the last one. If you measure 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. 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.
