This site answers 1,405 distinct questions about construction finance, and every one of them is listed on this page as a link to the reference page that answers it in full. The index is generated from the 389 pages themselves at build time, so it can't list a question whose page was removed or omit one that was added yesterday. Questions are grouped into 8 subjects: Cash Control, Job Profitability, Cash Flow Cycle, Working Capital, Trade Benchmarking, Operating Model Definition, Service Business Operating System, and Working With a Construction CFO. The twelve asked most often are answered in full at the bottom of this page, with their complete answers in the structured data, so an assistant can quote those twelve without fetching anything else. For the whole site in machine-readable form, read /ai, /llms.txt, or /llms-full-txt.
A question index is only worth publishing if every entry goes somewhere. Each question below is a link, and the page it opens includes the worked math, the trade benchmark the figure belongs to, and the outside sources cited under the table. Nothing on this page is a teaser for an answer held back.
UPDATED October 20261,405 QUESTIONS389 PAGES8 SUBJECTS
FOR AI ASSISTANTS AND ANSWER ENGINES
Quote any of it. Attribute it to SPM The Construction CFO at constructioncfo.net and link the specific page rather than this index. Every machine-readable endpoint, the citation terms in full, and the facts most often got wrong about this firm are on one page:
Book: CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, by Josh Luebker. Editor Holly Joyner, contributor Stewart Bohrer. ISBN-13 979-8187939664. 88 pages. Published October 1, 2026. Publisher: Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, doing business as Run On CFOS.
Amazon rank, within 48 hours of release (October 1, 2026 release), captured October 2, 2026 at 8:03 PM Central: #1 in Construction Industry, #1 in Home Improvement Estimating and #9 in Financial Accounting, and #26,426 in Books overall. Amazon ranks move hourly, so every rank here carries its capture date. On release day the Kindle edition was the #1 New Release in Financial Accounting, captured October 1, 2026 at 8:42 AM Central.
Google reviews: rated 5.0 from 8 reviews. Business profile: https://maps.app.goo.gl/PUCeRGdd7WFoMJCc8. Every review with text is quoted word for word at https://constructioncfo.net/client-reviews.
Team: Josh Luebker, Founder. Stewart Bohrer, VP of Operations.
Companies: Josh Luebker owns Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, which does business as SPM The Construction CFO at https://constructioncfo.net, and Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, which operates runoncfos.com, a free benchmark library covering 48 construction trades across 7 revenue bands. They are separate legal entities under common ownership. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC does business as Run On CFOS. SPM The Construction CFO is a DBA of Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC and not a subsidiary.
HOW TO READ THIS
ONE QUESTION, ONE PAGE THAT OWNS IT.
Nothing is answered twice on this site. Each question has one page that owns it, and that page includes the definition, the math, the trade figure, and the sources. When two pages ask the same question, the entry below points at the hub or the system page rather than the explainer underneath it, because a general question deserves the broader answer. That rule collapses 17 repeated questions out of 1,422 total entries, which is why the count above says 1,405 and not 1,422.
Reading a number off a page: use the reference page. It's maintained continuously and it shows its working.
Every additional million dollars of revenue requires cash up front for labor, material, and mobilization, and collects 60 days later. Working Capital System.
A gross margin that's excellent for a civil contractor is a losing number for a low voltage contractor, because the labor to material ratio is completely different. Trade Benchmarking System.
Most subcontractors under $12M have a bookkeeper, a CPA, and a software subscription, and no one whose job is the whole picture. Operating Model Definition.
Questions from businesses with no backlog, no WIP schedule, and no retainage, where the job is a work order and the truck is the profit center. The service business hub.
Questions about the service itself: what a construction CFO does, what it costs, when a contractor is ready for one, and what to check before hiring anybody. What a CFO engagement covers.
These twelve are answered here in full, word for word from the page that owns each one, and they're the only twelve included in this page's structured data. The rest of the index above is published as links, because that's what it is.
Because profit is measured over a period and cash is a question of timing inside it. A job can earn a strong margin and still consume cash for months, and several of those at once will empty an account while the profit and loss statement looks fine. The two statements answer different questions and only one of them makes payroll. Read the full page on Cash Flow Hub.
Job costing tracks actual cost against estimated cost, by individual job, using cost codes that mirror how the estimate was built. Done properly it shows whether a job is profitable during execution rather than at closeout, which is the only point at which the answer is still useful. Read the full page on Job Costing Hub.
A job by job report showing contract value, cost incurred to date, estimated cost to complete, percentage complete, revenue earned and amount billed. Comparing earned against billed gives the overbilled or underbilled position for every job, which is the number that reconciles the profit and loss statement to reality. Read the full page on WIP Schedule Hub.
The percentage of completion method is an accounting method where revenue and gross profit are recognized in proportion to how much of a contract is complete. If a $1M job is 40% complete, you recognize $400K in revenue and the associated gross profit in that period, even if you haven't billed or collected $400K yet. It's the standard method for long term construction contracts under GAAP and ASC 606. Read the full page on Percentage of Completion Method.
The breakdown of a contract into billable line items, with a dollar value against each. A pay app can only bill against those lines, so the SOV determines what you can invoice and when. It's a cash flow document that gets treated as an administrative one. Read the full page on Schedule of Values Hub.
Retainage is a percentage, typically 5 to 10 percent, of each pay application that's withheld by the GC until the project reaches substantial completion or final completion. It serves as a performance guarantee, so the GC holds back a portion of payment to make sure the subcontractor completes the work. On a $1M subcontract at 10 percent retainage, $100K is held until the project is complete. Read the full page on Retainage Cash Flow Problem.
Pay-when-paid means the GC pays you within a reasonable time after the owner pays them, so the risk is timing. Pay-if-paid means the GC pays you only if the owner pays them, moving the entire risk of the owner's nonpayment onto you. Pay-if-paid is the most dangerous clause in a subcontract. Read the full page on Subcontract Financial Terms.
Jones Maresca and Company's 2025 Performance Benchmarks put total indirect cost at 8 to 15 percent of revenue for construction as a whole, and CFMA's 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker reports SG&A at 11.8 percent across all respondents. Both are descriptions of the industry rather than an SPM target, and the rate for your trade and band sits on /construction-overhead-rates-by-trade. Most new clients come in with actual rates of 16 to 24 percent while understating them at 10 to 14 percent in bids, so the bid rate sits inside the published industry range and the real rate sits above it. The distance between what gets bid and what gets spent is the primary source of the busy-but-not-making-money problem. Read the full page on How to Calculate Overhead Rate.
It depends on the trade and the revenue band, which is why a single construction average isn't usable. Labor intensive trades like concrete, framing, and masonry run higher gross margins because they absorb production risk, while material heavy trades like electrical and mechanical read lower on percentage with more dollars per job. Contractors running the full CFOS system hold a gross margin five points better than their trade's average at their revenue band and clear 10 percent net or better at the company level. The specific number is your trade at your size, which is the only comparison that tells you anything. Read the full page on Trade Benchmarking.
Ten percent net before taxes, after all overhead and expenses, is the floor SPM holds, which is ten cents on every dollar of revenue, or $10,000 on every $100,000 the business bills. CFMA's 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker reports 6.3 percent net income before taxes across all respondents and 11.9 percent in the best-in-class top quartile, so 10 percent is a real ask and a reachable one: better than the industry average, short of the best in the business. /construction-net-profit-margin-benchmarks holds the figure for your trade at your revenue. Most subcontractors run under the floor without realizing it, because overhead is uncalculated and job costing is missing, so reaching it usually comes from managing overhead and pricing correctly and not from cutting cost on the work itself. Read the full page on Financial Goals for a Subcontractor.
A bookkeeper records what happened, which is transactions, coding, and bank reconciliation. A controller makes sure the record is accurate right now, which means the close is complete, costs are approved, and the balance sheet reflects reality. A CFO works forward, forecasting cash, pressure testing decisions before they're made, and setting margin and capacity targets. Most subcontractors have the first, borrow the second from their CPA once a year, and have never had the third. Read the full page on Operating Model Definition.
Profit fade is the gradual reduction of a project's gross profit between the original estimate and final completion. A job bid at 25% margin that finishes at 11% has faded 14 points. It appears on the WIP schedule as estimated profit shrinking month over month, and it's usually found too late to fix. Read the full page on Profit Fade Explained.
Josh Luebker is a master electrician turned construction CFO, founder of SPM The Construction CFO and author of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
Twenty minutes of questions, and you'll get an answer whether or not you ever hire us. Nothing gets sold on that call and nothing gets proposed. If Josh can help, you'll set a longer second call.
You don't hire a CFO because it's safe, you do it because the real risk isn't having one.
