COST TO COMPLETE: THE NUMBER THAT KEEPS JOBS HONEST.
Cost to date is bookkeeping, because it already happened. Cost to complete is the management number, and it sets your real percent complete, your projected final margin, your WIP schedule, and the only early warning a fading job ever gives. The honest method builds it line by line off remaining work: remaining hours times burdened rates, remaining quantities times unit costs, and committed subcontract balances. Subtracting spend from budget isn't that. It just assumes the estimate was right.
Billion-dollar GCs do this discipline monthly on a dedicated day, and it works the same at $5M. Budget minus spent is a prayer with math, because it silently assumes the original estimate was perfect, which is the one thing a fading job has already disproven. The difference between the two methods is the difference between catching a slide at 40 percent complete and performing an autopsy at closeout. One of those is a management decision. The other is a story you tell your accountant in February.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Cost to complete is the answer to one question asked line by line: how much more money will it take to finish this job?
Everything downstream reads off this one number. Earned revenue and over or under-billings compute from it, the projected final margin on the CEO Report comes from it, and the percent complete your surety underwrites comes from it. That's why a cost to complete nobody challenges isn't a small problem: one soft figure per job makes four documents wrong at once.
WHY THE NUMBER ISN'T TRUE.
Budget minus spent assumes the estimate was perfect
The lazy cost to complete, budget minus cost to date, silently assumes the original estimate was right, and that's the one thing a fading job has already disproven. It produces a number that always reconciles and never warns. A line can be at 90 percent of its budget with 60 percent of the work done, and budget minus spent will still report the remaining 10 percent as the money left to finish it.
One blended percent complete leaves everything unseen
A single job-level percentage leaves the lines that are in trouble not visible. Quantity-based work has to be measured off units in place, labor off hours earned against hours used, and subcontracted scope off milestone completion rather than invoices received. Material-heavy lines need the stored versus installed distinction, or one big delivery fakes progress on work nobody has performed yet.
The number gets treated as a form instead of a discipline
When the cost to complete is a document somebody fills in rather than a monthly conversation, it gradually becomes inaccurate. Nobody challenges the assumptions, the same figure rolls forward, and the WIP inherits it. Accounting doing it alone produces budget minus spent in a spreadsheet, and the field doing it alone produces optimism in a hard hat. Neither one is a forecast.
The warning signs are invisible in the wrong method
A projected final margin sliding two reviews in a row, labor percent complete lagging cost percent complete, a line at 90 percent spent and 60 percent complete, a cost to complete revised upward twice on the same line, and percent complete that hasn't moved while costs have are every early warning a fading job gives you. Every one of them is invisible under budget minus spent and obvious under an honest cost to complete.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
That's the point where fade gets caught instead of mourned. A job sliding from 24 percent to 19 percent margin turns up in the monthly review as a cost to complete move while there's still 60 percent of the job left to fix it in. The $4.9M concrete sub that went from $161K to $1.1M net didn't bid better. It started seeing jobs slide in month two rather than at closeout.
The cadence goes into everything downstream. Cost to complete determines the WIP, since earned revenue and over or under-billings compute from it, plus the projected final margins on the CEO Report and the percent complete your surety underwrites. That's one honest monthly discipline and four documents that stop lying.
That's the time per job once the structure exists. The objection to cost to complete is always time, and it's a fair objection when job costing is a shoebox. With cost codes matching the estimate and costs posting weekly, the monthly update takes twenty minutes a job. The structure is the work, and SPM builds it in the 60 day install.
BUILDING IT LINE BY LINE.
The honest method asks each line what it will take to finish. Labor comes in as remaining hours at current burdened rates and current production, so if the crew is 20 percent over estimate then the remaining hours are too. Material comes in as remaining quantities at current prices. Equipment comes in as remaining duration at real daily rates. Subs come in at committed contract balances plus expected changes.
Quantity-based lines like yards placed and feet installed get measured off units in place. Labor gets measured off hours, earned against used at current productivity. Subcontracted scope gets measured off milestone completion rather than off invoices received. Material-heavy lines need the stored versus installed distinction or a big delivery fakes progress. The job's overall percent complete is the cost-weighted rollup of honest line measurements, never a field guess and never just cost over budget.
Whoever owns each job's financials updates the percent complete and the money left per line every month, then presents it after the books close on the 10th. It takes about twenty minutes per job once the structure exists. The rollup goes into the WIP, the projected final margins, and the management conversation about which lines moved, why, and what happens next. That's accountability that shows problems leadership can still solve, which is why the billion-dollar companies never skip it.
The signals worth a same-week conversation are a projected final margin sliding two reviews in a row, labor percent complete lagging cost percent complete, a line at 90 percent spent and 60 percent complete, a cost to complete revised upward twice on the same line, and percent complete that hasn't moved while costs have. Fade caught at 40 percent gets re-sequenced, backcharged, or claimed. Fade found at closeout gets eulogized.
Concrete measures off yards and square feet in place, with finishing labor forecast separately because that's where concrete jobs fade and a blended percentage conceals it, and stored rebar and embeds need the stored versus installed split or deliveries inflate progress. Civil gets cleaner numbers from unit-price scopes, remaining quantities times unit cost, as long as field quantities are surveyed honestly, and the trap there's equipment, meaning remaining duration at real daily rates including the idle days the schedule delay just created. Electrical needs phase-level cost to complete or nothing, because rough-in, trim, and closeout fade differently and the closeout tail of punch, testing, and commissioning chronically gets forecast at zero remaining hours when it's months of labor, while pending change orders get their own lines. Multi-site erosion work uses cost to complete per site rolled up per contract, with maintenance-phase scopes forecast off duration, meaning remaining months times monthly cost, and storm response work entered the week it happens rather than after the season.
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. The one-time onboarding fee is right here in the table.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 to $3,300 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $5,300 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $8,300 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $11,800 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $14,900 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $17,650 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $22,400 | $9,000 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually | Quoted individually |
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. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
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. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
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 and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
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 cover it.
A bookkeeper we choose does the books and reconciliations. No payroll.
You approve, and the money side gets handled.
Everything in Strategic, plus a controller we choose who handles your bills and receivables for you the way an in-house controller would. They 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.
A controller we choose does the payables and receivables. No payroll, no pay applications, no collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
