CONSTRUCTION FINANCE VS. ACCOUNTING.
Accounting and finance get used interchangeably by most subcontractors, but they're completely different functions. Accounting is the historical record: what happened, what got billed, what got paid, and what the IRS needs to see. Finance is the forward looking decision layer: what to bid, what to invest in, how to fund growth, and when to add capacity. Most subcontractors run reasonable accounting, because the bookkeeper covers it, and almost no finance, because nobody owns it.
Your bookkeeper tells you what happened last month. A CFO tells you what to do about next month. Most subcontractors only have the first one, so the business has visibility into the past and no structured way to decide about the future. Bid pricing, cash management, and growth choices all get made on gut feel by an owner who is good at the work and has never been given the numbers in a form that supports a decision. That's not a knowledge problem on the owner's part. It's a missing function.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Construction finance is the forward looking decision layer of the business, what to bid, what to invest in, how to fund growth, and when to add capacity, as opposed to accounting, which is the historical record of what already happened.
The two functions answer different questions. Accounting answers what happened, what we billed, what we collected, what we spent, what we owed at month end, and what the IRS needs to see, and the output is historical: financial statements, tax returns, and sales tax filings. Finance answers what we should bid next, whether we can afford to add a crew, whether to chase public work or private commercial, what the right rate is for this T&M work, whether we can carry a larger bond, when the line of credit needs renewing, and whether to buy or lease a piece of equipment. The output is forward looking: decisions, capacity planning, and capital allocation.
FOUR SYMPTOMS OF NO FINANCE FUNCTION.
Bid pricing without cost to deliver analysis
The estimator runs the job through the estimating software using production rates that may or may not reflect current cost. Overhead absorption gets added at a rate calculated 18 months ago, and margin gets added at what the market will bear. Nobody reviews whether that combination produces the target margin given what the work costs to deliver today. Most subs are 4 to 12% mispriced on at least 30% of their bids and can't tell you which 30%.
Cash management without forecasting
The cash position gets checked when the bank app loads on Monday morning. Vendor payments get scheduled based on what came in last week, and big payments get deferred when cash looks tight. There's no 13 week forecast, no working capital target, and no structured read on when the next crunch is coming. The business runs from cash event to cash event instead of against a forward plan.
Growth without capacity modeling
The owner decides to add a crew, buy a truck, chase a bigger project, or hire a PM, and the decision gets made on confidence and opportunity. Nobody models the working capital impact, the bonding capacity required, the change in overhead absorption, or what it does to the cash conversion cycle. Six months later cash tightens, and nobody traces it back to the growth decisions that caused it.
Banking and surety relationships unmanaged
The line of credit gets reviewed when it's about to be maxed. The surety relationship is whatever the broker does at renewal, and the CPA relationship is annual at tax time. None of the three gets treated as strategic infrastructure that needs managing. When bonding capacity is needed urgently, the relationships aren't positioned to deliver it, and when the line of credit needs to grow, the lender hasn't been set up for the request.
BOTH FUNCTIONS, ONE TEAM.
CFOS treats accounting and finance as parts of the same job. The bookkeeping is right because we control it. The financial control layer, meaning WIP, working capital management, and AR collections, runs on a set cadence. The CFO advisory layer sits on top of operations we already own, so the owner gets the historical accuracy of strong accounting and the forward looking decision support of real finance from one team on one connected set of systems.
The result is a business running against its financial reality with informed decisions about what comes next, instead of running against historical data and a gut feel about the future. None of that requires the owner to learn accounting. It requires somebody to own the finance function and bring the answer to the monthly meeting with a recommendation attached.
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.
