A MARKUP MODIFIER MOVES THE QUANTITY.
A markup modifier is the adjustment to the quantity of hours or material units a job needs because of the conditions it gets built under: floor 5 against floor 1, a 50 foot ceiling against 12, a secured site against a 10 foot walk from the truck, or the slop on a concrete pour. It multiplies the quantity and never the price, so the extra hours and the extra units stay visible on the cost report. Markup, as an estimating calculator uses the word, is profit divided by cost. A markup modifier has no profit in it at all, which is why they cannot share a word.
What most estimators call markup is two things under one label. One of them is a markup modifier for the conditions, and the other is the margin the company is owed. Pricing them as a single number is how both get lost: the job comes in over on hours with the margin blamed for it, and the margin gets cut on the next bid to win the work. Three numbers do three different jobs, and only one of them is profit.
WHAT IT MEANS.
A markup modifier is the adjustment applied to the quantity of labor hours or material units a job consumes because of the conditions it gets built under. It holds no profit in it and it is separate from both the overhead line item and the margin.
Every trade already does this and most do it in their head. A foreman looks at a set of drawings, sees the fifth floor and a hoist queue, and adds to the hours without writing it down. The problem is never the judgement. It's that the addition leaves no record, so at closeout the job is over on labor and the only available explanation is that the crew was slow. Write the same judgement down as a modifier on the quantity and the closeout tells you whether the foreman was right.
THREE WAYS THIS GETS PRICED WRONG.
The modifier gets buried in the price
Bidding 100 cubic yards at a unit rate lifted 10 percent recovers the same money as buying 110 yards, and it teaches you nothing. The slop is inside the rate now, so the closeout compares 100 against 100 and reports no waste at all. A year later the waste factor is folklore and every bid uses the same number somebody picked once.
The modifier gets counted as margin
A bid with 18 percent added to it feels like an 18 percent job. When the conditions consume 12 of those points the job closes at 6 and reads as a margin failure, so the response is to chase price on the next one. The margin was never 18. It was 6 with a 12 point modifier in front of it, and nothing on the bid sheet said so.
One blended number covers the modifier, the overhead and the margin
A single percentage added to cost has to recover three unrelated things at once: the conditions on this job, the company's fixed costs for the year, and the profit. Each moves for its own reasons. A secured site changes the first and has no view of the other two, and a blended number cannot tell you which one moved when the job comes in light.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Framing the fifth floor of a building takes more hours than framing the first, and the drawings are identical. Material rides a hoist on somebody else's schedule, the crew loses minutes at both ends of every trip, and the lay-down area is somewhere else. If the base takeoff is 400 hours and the fifth floor needs 1.15 of them, the bid holds 460 hours and the closeout compares actuals against 460. A foreman who beats it is visible for the first time, and so is one who does not.
Concrete has slop. Take the cubic yards off the drawings, apply a 10 percent markup modifier as an example figure, and buy 110 yards against a 100 yard takeoff. The reconciliation at the end of the pour gives you the real number: ordered 110, placed 100, wasted 10. Do that on twelve pours and the modifier stops being a rule of thumb. The one waste figure the 48 trade dataset publishes today is masonry at 8 to 10 percent on standard work and up to 15 percent on complex patterns.
A modifier priced only in dollars tells you the job cost more. A modifier tracked in hours and in units tells you why, and which of the two it was. Josh, 2026-09-21: it is like a direct cost impact, and it is worth tracking those added labor hours and material quantities on their own. The dollars reach the profit and loss either way. The quantities are the part that improves the next bid.
THREE NUMBERS, THREE DIFFERENT JOBS.
Base hours multiplied by the condition modifier gives the bid hours. Takeoff quantity multiplied by the waste modifier gives the purchased quantity. It attaches to a number of hours or a number of units, never to a rate, and that is what keeps it measurable when the job closes.
Total indirect cost for the year divided by revenue gives the historical rate. That percentage goes into the next bid as its own line, recovering what the company costs to exist. It is calculated from last year and applied forward, and it has nothing to do with how hard this particular job is to build.
Margin is profit divided by price and it is the last number, applied after the direct cost, the modifier and the overhead line are all in. Keeping it last is what stops it from absorbing the other two. A job that closes short of its margin now has two other places to look before anybody blames the price.
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. No add-ons.
| 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 and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Your office stops answering coding questions and stops chasing a reconciliation on the last day of the month.
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 books, the job costing, and the software. No payroll.
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