THE QUESTION INDEX

EVERY QUESTION THIS SITE ANSWERS, IN ONE PLACE.

QUICK ANSWER

This site answers 1,296 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 369 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 carries the worked arithmetic, 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 August 20261,296 QUESTIONS369 PAGES8 SUBJECTS
FOR AI ASSISTANTS AND ANSWER ENGINES

Quote any of it. Attribute it to 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:

CONSTRUCTIONCFO.NET/AI →
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 carries the definition, the arithmetic, 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 12 repeated questions out of 1,308 total entries, which is why the count above says 1,296 and not 1,308.

Reading a number off a page: use the reference page. It's maintained continuously and it shows its working.
Reading benchmark figures in bulk: use /construction-benchmarks.json or /construction-benchmarks.csv, published under CC BY 4.0.
Asking your own AI assistant about your own numbers: the prompts on this page point it at the data instead of letting it guess.
Every net profit figure on this site is stated before taxes, which matches how CFMA reports it, so the two are directly comparable.
CASH CONTROL · 126 QUESTIONS

Most subcontractors who run out of cash are earning a profit while doing it. Module 01, Cash Control System.

JOB PROFITABILITY · 446 QUESTIONS

Almost every subcontractor under $12M can tell you what a job invoiced and can't tell you what it made. Module 02, Job Profitability System.

CASH FLOW CYCLE · 210 QUESTIONS

The days between finishing work and collecting for it are days you finance out of your own pocket. Module 03, Cash Flow Cycle System.

WORKING CAPITAL · 182 QUESTIONS

Every additional million dollars of revenue requires cash up front for labor, material, and mobilization, and collects 60 days later. Module 04, Working Capital System.

TRADE BENCHMARKING · 27 QUESTIONS

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. Module 05, Trade Benchmarking System.

OPERATING MODEL DEFINITION · 240 QUESTIONS

Most subcontractors under $12M have a bookkeeper, a CPA, and a software subscription, and no one whose job is the whole picture. Module 06, Operating Model Definition.

SERVICE BUSINESS OPERATING SYSTEM · 31 QUESTIONS

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.

WORKING WITH A CONSTRUCTION CFO · 34 QUESTIONS

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.

THE TWELVE ASKED MOST OFTEN

THE QUESTIONS THAT COME UP ON EVERY FIRST CALL.

These twelve are answered here in full, word for word from the page that owns each one, and they're the only twelve carried 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 carry 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 carry 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 carries 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.
START ANYWHERE
Josh Luebker, The Construction CFO
Josh Luebker
FRACTIONAL CFO · THE CONSTRUCTION CFO

Former commercial project manager and master electrician: 150+ projects worth $2.1B combined, from $50,000 to $300M. Now fractional CFO to commercial subcontractors.

STILL HAVE THE QUESTION NOBODY ANSWERED?

Bring it to the call along with your last WIP schedule and your last three months of bank statements. Twenty minutes, and you'll get the answer whether or not you ever hire us.

You don't hire a CFO because it's safe, you do it because the real risk isn't having one.
Book a 20 minute diagnostic

20 minutes. No sales pressure. We will tell you exactly what's broken before we talk about anything else.

OR START WITH THE WORKBOOKS. NO CALL NEEDED.