WHY YOU LOSE BIDS YOU SHOULD WIN.
When you lose a bid you priced correctly, the usual cause is a closing failure. Three of them cost the most. Your scope doesn't match the GC's scope sheet, so your number gets compared against a different quantity of work. Your qualifications and exclusions read as risk the GC has to take on itself. Or nobody followed up, so a number that was a few thousand dollars apart never got a second conversation. Behind all three is a missing bid log. Without one, nobody can tell you which of the three is happening to you.
Winning too much is the same problem from the other end. If you win most of what you bid, you're the cheapest, and the cause is usually your own overhead rate. So you check the closing process and the win ratio separately. The ratio tells you the pricing is off and roughly in which direction. The closing record tells you whether you lost on price, scope, paperwork or silence. Changing the number fixes only one of those four.
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WHAT IT MEANS.
The bid closing process is everything that happens between submitting a number and receiving an award. That's the scope reconciliation, the qualifications attached to the price, the follow up conversation, and the record of what you bid and how each bid ended.
The bid log is the whole tool, and it's simple. Every bid gets the date, the general contractor, the scope, the number submitted, the qualifications attached, the outcome, and where you finished if you can find out. After six months of that, you can see the reason and nobody has to argue about it. The log feels like more paperwork on top of estimating. It's also the only record that tells you whether to reprice, rewrite the qualifications, or start calling.
There's a second reason to keep it, and it has nothing to do with losses. The log is where you compare bid margin against the margin the job produced when it closed, per general contractor and per project type. Say you win a lot of work from one GC, and the margin on those jobs keeps coming in under the bid. That's more useful to know than a closing problem, and only the log will show it.
Winning most of what you bid is the same failure from the opposite side, and owners read it as a strength. A high award rate on competitive work usually means your number is low, and the reason is in your own overhead rate. Every award keeps that low number in place for the length of the job. So the log has to record the wins as carefully as the losses. A series of easy awards tells you something too. The win ratio page covers the calculation and the range.
THREE REASONS THE AWARD WENT ELSEWHERE.
Your scope and the GC's scope sheet aren't the same scope
You priced what the drawings show. The GC is comparing bids against a scope sheet that includes two items you excluded and excludes one you included. So your number reads high against a bid that covers less work. The GC is comparing what's in front of them. Reconciling the two scopes is your job, and you do it before the number goes out.
The qualifications read like risk
A page of defensive exclusions tells a general contractor that whatever you left out is theirs to solve at their cost. Write the same items as conditions, with a price on each one, and you read as a contractor who knows the work. Two bids with the same number and different qualification pages are different bids. The estimator picking between them knows which one means fewer phone calls.
Nobody follows up, so a close number stays close
When your bid is a few thousand dollars off the award, the conversation about it never happened. GCs award off the number in front of them because they have no reason to ask. The sub who calls to confirm scope and ask where he placed is often the sub who gets one more chance. It costs an hour a week, and most subcontractors never do it.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take twenty competitive bids in a year at an average value of $180,000. That's $3.6M of work priced. You win five, which is $900,000 of it. Say three of the fifteen losses finished within a few percent of the award, and one of those three would have changed with a phone call. That call was worth $180,000 of revenue, and it takes an hour to make. Every figure in that example is illustrative math, and none of it is a benchmark. You can only do this math because the bid log holds the numbers. Without the log, the three near misses look the same as the twelve that were never close.
A win ratio is one number, and it moves for four different reasons. Six months of bid records separate them. Price losses cluster around a figure. Scope losses cluster around one general contractor's scope sheet. Qualification losses cluster around one clause. Silence losses don't cluster at all, because nobody called. The ratio tells you something is off, and the bid records tell you what.
THE CLOSING PROCESS, WRITTEN DOWN.
Log the date, general contractor, scope, number submitted, qualifications attached, outcome, and where you finished if you can find out. Most estimating files record the submission and stop, and the submission alone can't teach you anything. After six months of outcomes, you stop arguing about pricing and read the record. It usually says something different from what everybody assumed.
Somebody reads the GC's scope sheet line by line against what you priced. Every difference gets priced or gets stated in the cover letter in plain terms. That takes ten minutes, and it stops the most common loss on this page: a correct number compared against a smaller quantity of work.
Wherever you can put a price against an exclusion, turn it into a condition. The general contractor can then see what it costs to include the item. The bid reads as complete with options, and it does better in a side by side comparison.
Once a week, go through everything you've submitted that hasn't been awarded yet. Confirm receipt, confirm scope, and ask where you placed on anything already awarded. That last question is where the closing data comes from, and it is published in full. Make the call for six months and you'll know things about your own pricing that a report wouldn't have told you.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
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. We don't bill by the hour, and we don't do payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is in the table.
Built for subs doing $1M to $12M. Above $12.5M we quote.
| Last 12 months revenue | Core | Strategic | Platinum | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 | $3,100 | $3,300 | $2,500 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 | $4,100 | $5,300 | $4,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 | $5,900 | $8,300 | $6,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 | $7,600 | $11,800 | $7,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 | $8,900 | $14,900 | $9,000 |
| Above $12.5M | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted |
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, and it moves with your revenue band. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
Just want the setup? Onboarding only is the same onboarding work with no monthly service after it, one time, at the onboarding fee plus $2,000. Start a monthly engagement later and $2,000 counts toward it. It starts at $4,500, and the price for every band is on the pricing page.
The three tier columns are the whole price. Which one fits 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.
- Online software only: QuickBooks, Sage, Viewpoint and similar. No VPN or hosted desktop.
- Not in any tier: payroll, pay applications, collections on receivables.
- Pricing valid through 2027.
CFO work. Your own bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
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Core, plus bookkeeping and bank reconciliations, plus job costing and WIP software set up and managed for you. Use your own online accounting software or we supply it, one price.
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We only work with trade subcontractors. We know what to look for, and we fix problems while they're still small. 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 pay for it.
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Strategic, plus a controller who handles payables and receivables the way an in-house controller would. You approve every payment.
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Everything in Strategic, plus our team does the controller work. We handle your bills and receivables the way an in-house controller would: we 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.
Our team does the payables and receivables. We don't do payroll, pay applications or collections.
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