MORE VALUE WITHOUT MORE REVENUE.
A buyer pays for profit that can be proved and is likely to continue. So two companies at the same revenue can be worth very different numbers. One verified $13.1M marine general contractor moved net profit from 7 to 14 percent before taxes on the same revenue. That recovered $917,000 a year that was already inside the business. The valuation went from $2.3M to $5.5M in nine months. The crews, the equipment and the work stayed the same. The profit became provable, and the record became one a third party would rely on.
The profit is usually already there. It's in spending nobody has examined across several growth years. It's in overhead coded into job costs, where nobody looks for it. And there's no per project number, so the business earns more than its books can prove. A buyer discounts whatever you can't prove. So does a bank, and so does a surety. They diligence three to five years of trailing record, so start this work well before you want to sell.
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.
Increasing a construction company's value without adding revenue means raising the profit a buyer will underwrite and their confidence that it continues. Both depend on documentation as much as on performance.
Owner dependence and customer concentration lower the price too. If the business can't operate for a week without you in the daily decisions, a buyer has to replace you. If one general contractor accounts for too much of the revenue, the buyer prices for that risk. You can correct both without a dollar of extra revenue. Both take longer than a quarter, so start early.
A surety and a bank underwrite the same two things a buyer does. One is a balance sheet that can absorb a bad month. The other is a profit record clean enough to project forward. So this work affects a bonding limit and a credit line as well as a sale price. If you install it and then decide not to sell, you keep the margin anyway. It's one of the few pieces of exit work that isn't wasted if the exit never happens.
WHY THE NUMBER IS LOWER THAN YOU THOUGHT.
The profit is real and it's not provable
A fully staffed accounting department can close a month, pay the bills and produce a complete record, and still tell nobody what a project earned. Adding people makes the record more complete. It doesn't tell you more about the jobs. When a buyer asks their questions, the answers aren't in a form anybody would underwrite, and that sets the price.
Spending nobody has examined is reducing the margin
Subscriptions, vendor terms and material purchasing add up across years of growth. Revenue kept covering them, so nobody had a reason to look. No single item is large. Together they can be most of a year's profit. At one verified $13.1M marine contractor, that examination recovered $917,000 a year that had been inside the business the whole time.
The owner is the operating system
If the estimating judgment, the general contractor relationships and the daily decisions all depend on one person, a buyer is buying a job with equipment attached. The discount for that is rational, and it's large. Moving the operating decisions to a team and a reporting cadence is the slowest of the three corrections here. It also moves the price most.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A verified $13.1M marine general contractor had four accounting staff. It had no job costing and no reporting at the project level. Net profit moved from 7 to 14 percent before taxes on the same revenue, which recovered $917,000 a year of margin. The business was valued at $2.3M before and $5.5M after. That's $3.2M more in value on the same crews, the same equipment and the same work. Most of the margin recovery was complete inside the first 90 days. The remaining six months built the documented record the buyer relied on.
The CONTROL standard is working capital at 10 to 15 percent of annual revenue, with 13 percent as the number to build toward. It's also a current ratio between 1.3 and 2.0, and debt to equity below 1.0. An outside party uses those three figures to decide whether the business can absorb a bad month. A profit record and those three ratios are all that gets underwritten. So revenue growth on its own moves the price very little.
WHAT MOVES THE PRICE.
Every project has its own cost record against what it was priced at, cost coded the way the estimate was built. With that record you can defend a profit figure. Nothing else can be documented until it exists, so this is the first four weeks of the work.
Subscriptions, vendor terms and material purchasing get checked line by line, once and properly. Most of what turns up is small, and nobody ever challenged any of it. Then the monthly reporting keeps it in place. Without that monthly check, the spending comes back inside a year and the recovered margin is lost again.
Our standard cadence is monthly. Inside a sale process we work twice monthly, because a buyer underwrites a trend, and a trend needs enough points to be one. Nine consecutive clean months changed the number in the engagement above. You can't produce that record after the fact.
Owner pay goes onto the books at a market rate for the work being done. Then the profit figure a buyer sees is the profit the business makes, with none of the pay the owner chose not to take mixed in. Then the operating decisions move to a team and a reporting rhythm. That second part is slow, and it moves the price more than anything else.
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.
