The CEO Report dashboard SPM produces monthly shows these four numbers alongside 13-month trend lines for each. The owner spends 30-45 minutes reviewing the dashboard in the monthly CFO meeting. That is the 5 hours per month SPM clients spend on financials.
Gross margin by job — not just overall. Total gross margin for the period tells you whether the business made money. Gross margin by job tells you which jobs made money and which did not. A civil contractor with 23% overall gross margin but three jobs running at 12% and two at 32% needs to know which GC relationships and job types are profitable. SPM produces job-level gross margin monthly from ControlQore data.
Overhead rate versus bid model. What is in the bid model versus what SG&A actually was last month as a percentage of revenue. When these diverge the bid model needs updating. SPM recalculates overhead rate monthly from actual P&L data and flags when it differs from the rate in bids by more than 1-2 points.
AR over 45 days. Dollar amount of invoices outstanding more than 45 days. This number should be trending down or staying near zero. When it grows it means earned cash is not being collected and the business is funding GC payment terms from operating cash. SPM targets zero AR over 45 days through the weekly Monday collections call.
WIP position — net overbilled or underbilled. The net position across all active jobs: are jobs overbilled or underbilled in total? A net underbilled position means pay apps need to be submitted. A net overbilled position means billing is running ahead of work performed. Both are fine in moderation. Large swings month to month signal billing timing issues that need to be addressed.
