YOU BUILT THE COMPANY. YOU'RE NOT ON THE PAYROLL.
An owner who takes whatever cash is left after everything else gets paid is absorbing their own compensation into overhead, which means the company's real profitability is understated on every report. The CFOS vision target is a fixed $180,000 salary plus draws, treated as a real payroll cost rather than a leftover.
The number a business reports is only as honest as the costs inside it. Leave the owner's pay out and gross margin looks better than it is, the overhead rate is too low, and every bid priced off that rate gives away margin the business needed. Put a fixed salary in and two things change at once. Reported profit becomes what the business earns after paying everyone who works in it, and the overhead rate finally covers the cost of the person running the company. Bids priced off the honest rate stop subsidizing the owner's own paycheck.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Owner compensation as overhead is the practice of treating the owner's pay as a fixed cost the business must budget and earn, the same as any other salaried position, rather than as whatever cash happens to be left over after every other expense clears.
This isn't a tax question and it's not about taking more money out. An owner can set the fixed salary below what they were drawing and still fix the reporting problem, because the point is that the cost is documented and budgeted rather than variable. Once it's a real line, the overhead rate built on top of it's a number you can price against with a straight face.
WHY LEFTOVER PAY HIDES THE REAL NUMBER.
Profit includes unpaid labor
If the owner works full time in the business without a fixed salary, the reported net profit includes the value of that labor as if it were pure return. That overstates how profitable the business model truly is, and it overstates it on every report the business produces, in every month, for as long as the arrangement lasts.
There's no fixed number to plan against
A variable owner draw means there's no stable overhead figure to price jobs against. The true cost of running the business moves month to month depending on how much the owner chose, or was able, to take. An overhead rate built on a moving number is wrong in both directions, and nobody can tell you which direction it's wrong in this quarter.
Tight months hit the owner first, invisibly
When cash gets tight, the owner's pay is usually the first thing to disappear. That absorbs stress which never appears anywhere on a financial statement, because it was never a documented cost in the first place. The business looks like it got through the month on its own, and the same squeeze happens again next quarter with nothing on the record to explain why.
THE OWNER GETS PUT ON REAL PAYROLL.
A fixed owner salary gets set and paid on schedule, treated as a true overhead line the business must price its work to cover. The CFOS $12M Vision target of a fixed $180,000 salary plus draws is the benchmark to work toward, and it stays the benchmark even before the company is at that revenue size.
The overhead rate gets rebuilt with the real cost of owner labor in it, so bids and pricing reflect what the business costs to run. Until that happens, every job gets priced as though the person running the company works for free, and every won job carries that error forward for its whole duration.
The cushion gets sized so the owner's salary isn't the variable that absorbs a slow month. Without it, the first tight month turns the salary back into a leftover and the overhead rate goes back to being wrong. The cushion is what makes the fixed number stay fixed.
Every month the CEO report shows whether the business is earning enough to cover the fixed salary target, alongside the rest of the overhead. A number nobody reports is a number nobody manages, and owner pay is the line most likely to go unreported because the owner is the one absorbing it.
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.
| 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.
