WHAT HAS TO EXIST BEFORE YOU GROW.
Most contractors install a financial system after something breaks, which is the most expensive moment to do it. The proactive route costs less and takes the same amount of work, because the install sequence is identical whether the business is calm or on fire. Job costing goes in first, since every other output reads off it. The monthly close on a fixed date goes second, since a report built from books nobody closed is a guess with formatting. The forward tools go third, because a cost to complete, a cash forecast, and a WIP schedule all need closed history behind them before they mean anything. None of that can be compressed into the month you win the job.
The reason sequence beats effort here is that history can't be produced retroactively. A prequalification package, a credit increase, and a bonding conversation are all built from closed months and a WIP schedule that ties to them, and you can't close a month you already spent. So the owner who starts the install while the business is calm gets the reports for free by the time the bigger work is available, and the owner who starts it the week of the award spends the whole job proving numbers instead of running it.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Scaling readiness is the condition where job costing, a monthly close on a fixed date, a cost to complete anybody can produce on request, and a working capital floor are all installed and running before the revenue that needs them is under contract.
Nothing on this page assumes anything is wrong. The reader we write it for has current books, jobs that mostly finish near where they were bid, and a bank that says yes to what they ask for. What they can feel is that the next step, a second crew, a job twice the size of anything they have run, or a customer with a real prequalification desk, is going to ask for something the business doesn't produce today.
The order counts more than the size of the effort. Every one of these items depends on the one before it, so installing them out of order produces work that gets thrown away. That's the single most common reason a contractor pays for a system twice.
WHAT BREAKS FIRST WHEN NOTHING IS BROKEN.
A financial system can't be installed in the month you need it
Job cost structures get built against how you estimate, which means somebody has to read the estimates. A close date only holds once the upstream habits feed it. A cash forecast is worthless until it has run for enough weeks to be compared against what happened. All of that's calendar time and none of it compresses, so the install has to start before the award rather than after it.
The reporting breaks before the work does
Growth rarely breaks the crews first. It breaks the ability to say which job is earning, because two more jobs running at once turns a monthly review anybody could do in their head into a report somebody has to produce. The work is still good and the numbers stop being available, which is the worst combination there is, because it looks like a bookkeeping complaint rather than a control problem.
The proof a bigger customer asks for is built from closed history
A prequalification form, a credit increase, and a surety's first look all read the same material: closed monthly financials, a WIP schedule that ties to them, and a cost to complete that holds up. Every one of those is history, and history has one supplier, which is a close that happened on time. A month nobody closed is a month you can't produce a statement for at any price.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take a project manager hired at $90,000, which runs near $115,000 fully burdened once payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits are on it. Add that person in March and keep bidding at the overhead rate you calculated last year, and the $115,000 is in the business and in nobody's bid. Bid $4M of work that year at the old rate and you have spread $115,000 of real cost across jobs that never carried it, which is roughly 2.9 points of margin given away. Recalculating the rate before the offer costs an afternoon.
Sign a job in March and start the install in March, and the first closed month containing that job closes in April. Three closed months of history with the new work in them exist by June. So a bank or prequalification package built off that history is a summer conversation, so the calendar decides it before you do, and no amount of urgency moves it. The only lever is starting earlier.
THE ORDER IT GETS INSTALLED IN.
The cost code structure gets built to match the assemblies you bid with, so a finished job can be read against the estimate line by line and not by vendor. This is first because everything else is downstream of it. A close, a WIP schedule, and a cost to complete built on cost codes that don't match the estimate produce reports nobody in the field believes.
Transaction cutoff, bank reconciliations, and the WIP reconciliation get put on a calendar with a date on it, and the date holds whether or not the month was busy. The close is the supplier for every other number in the business, which is why it goes in before the reporting anybody really wants. A report is only as current as the close behind it.
The cost to complete, the 13 week cash forecast, and the WIP schedule get stood up once two or three closed months exist to calibrate them against. Standing them up earlier produces documents that look right and forecast nothing, which teaches an owner to distrust the whole file. Order protects credibility here as much as accuracy.
Before you take on work a size larger than anything you've run, the same short review gets run every time: what the working capital floor has to be at the new revenue level, what the overhead rate is once the new hires are in it, whether the close date has held for three months running, and whether a cost to complete can be produced on request. Four answers, one afternoon, and it's the cheapest thing in this whole file. Run it every time and no award is ever the first place you learn something about your own capacity.
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.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
