MORE VALUE WITHOUT MORE REVENUE.
A buyer doesn't pay for revenue. A buyer pays for profit that can be proved and is likely to continue, which is why 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 on the same revenue, recovered $917,000 a year that was already inside the business, and went from a $2.3M valuation to $5.5M in nine months. Nothing changed about the crews, the equipment, or the work. What changed is that the profit became provable and the record became something a third party would rely on.
The reason this is available to most contractors is that the profit is usually already there. It sits in spending nobody has examined across several growth years, in overhead coded into job costs where nobody looks for it, and in a per project number that doesn't exist, so the business earns more than its books can demonstrate. A buyer discounts whatever can't be demonstrated, and so does a bank and so does a surety. Three to five years of trailing record is what gets diligenced, which is why this work is worth starting before you want to sell rather than in the year you decide to.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Increasing a construction company's value without adding revenue means raising the profit a buyer will underwrite and the confidence they have that it continues, since both are documentation problems as much as performance problems.
Owner dependence and customer concentration do the same damage from the other direction. A business that can't run a week without the owner in daily decisions is a business a buyer has to replace the owner inside, and one general contractor carrying too much of the revenue is a risk the buyer prices for. Neither one requires a dollar of extra revenue to correct, and both take longer than a quarter, which is the argument for starting early.
A surety and a bank underwrite the same two things a buyer does: a balance sheet that can absorb a bad month, and a profit record clean enough to project forward. That's why this work reaches a bonding limit and a credit line as well as a sale price. Owners who install it and then decide not to sell keep the margin anyway, which makes it one of the few pieces of exit work that's not wasted if the exit never happens.
WHY THE NUMBER IS LOWER THAN YOU THOUGHT.
The profit is real and it's not provable
A staffed accounting function can close a month, pay the bills, and produce a complete record while telling nobody what a project earned. Adding people to that function makes the record more complete without making the business more legible. When a buyer asks the questions a buyer asks, the answers aren't available in a form anybody would underwrite, and that's what sets the price.
Spending nobody has examined is eating the margin
Subscriptions, vendor terms, and material purchasing accumulate across years of growth, and because revenue kept covering them nobody had reason to look. Individually none of it's large. Together it 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 live in one person, a buyer is buying a job with equipment attached. That discount is rational and it's large. Moving the operating decisions into a team and a reporting cadence is the slowest of the three corrections here, and it's the one that moves the price most.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A verified $13.1M marine general contractor was running four accounting staff, no job costing, and no reporting at the project level. Net profit moved from 7 to 14 percent on the same revenue, recovering $917,000 a year of margin. The business valued at $2.3M before and $5.5M after, which is $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, and 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, a current ratio between 1.3 and 2.0, and debt to equity below 1.0. Those three figures are what an outside party uses to decide whether the business can absorb a bad month. A profit record and those three ratios are the whole of what gets underwritten, which is why revenue growth on its own moves the price so little.
WHAT MOVES THE PRICE.
Every project carries its own cost record against what it was priced at, cost coded the way the estimate was built. That structure is what makes a profit figure defensible instead of assertable, and nothing above it can be documented until it exists. This is the first four weeks of the work, not the last.
Subscriptions, vendor terms, and material purchasing get scrutinised line by line, once and properly. Most of what turns up is small and none of it was ever challenged. Then the monthly reporting holds it, because an examination without a cadence behind it decays inside a year and the recovered margin goes back where it came from.
Our standard cadence is monthly. Inside a sale process we run twice monthly, because a buyer is underwriting a trend rather than a month, and a trend needs enough points to be one. Nine consecutive clean months is what changed the number in the engagement above, and there's no way to produce that record retroactively.
Owner pay goes onto the books at a market rate for the work being done, so the profit figure a buyer sees is the profit the business makes rather than the profit plus whatever the owner chose not to take. Then the operating decisions move out to a team and a reporting rhythm. That second part is slow and it's the largest single lever on the price.
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.
