CONTROLQORE FOR ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS.
Generic accounting software can't read labor cost per phase while rough-in is still open, hold a copper escalation clause against the bid basis it was priced on, or keep service work out of the construction P&L. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for electrical contractors uses cost codes by phase: temporary power, feeders and distribution, branch rough-in by area, gear set, devices and trim-out, and testing. Labor cost per phase is compared weekly to the estimated rate from the bid. Long-lead gear deposits and stored material get their own codes, and service work is its own division, apart from construction. The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete. Every lien and bond claim deadline is calendared the day the contract signs.
What changes is when you find out. Electrical puts wire and labor in the wall at rough-in and bills the finish months later. So a P&L that reads fine in March describes a job whose real cost was set in January. Cost codes cut to phase turn the same crew hours into a rate per phase you can check against the bid in week two. Week two is early enough to add a man, change the method, or write the change order while the superintendent still remembers what happened.
THE NUMBERS GENERIC SOFTWARE MISSES.
WHAT IT IS.
ControlQore is a job costing and WIP platform for commercial subcontractors at $1M to $12M. It tracks cost by job and cost code. An electrical contractor can read labor cost per phase, rough-in separately from trim-out, while the rough-in crew is still in the building.
Electrical has the strongest margins of the trades on this site. It still nets 9 percent at $1M to $5M against a CFOS target of 12.5 percent, stated before taxes. In this trade the distance comes from the phases nobody measures separately, from the middle of the job where the cash gets tied up, and from receivables that age past the point where anyone remembers the work well enough to argue about it.
Overhead is the other half of it. Electrical overhead is 16 percent of revenue at $1M to $5M, the heaviest of the trades here, because vehicles, lifts and tooling go to overhead and not to equipment cost on a job. The CFOS overhead target at that band is 15 percent. To read that number correctly, you need to know what belongs to service and what belongs to construction. That's a cost code decision first.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
No Labor Cost Per Phase Until Closeout
QuickBooks job tracking gives you one labor total for the job. It can't tell you what branch rough-in on the third floor cost last week against the rate you bid for that phase. Electrical gross margin at $1M to $5M averages 25 percent, and the CFOS target is 27.5 percent. So two and a half points lost on rough-in labor is the whole difference between the two. A blended job total mixes those points in with the phases that came out fine. You don't see them until the last device is trimmed and the money is already spent.
The Rough-In Desert Is Financed by You
Electrical puts its labor and wire in at rough-in. Then it waits through every other trade before trim-out and final billing. In the middle of the job the cost is in the wall and the billing milestones are still months out. Retainage holds another 5 to 10 percent on top of that. It costs electrical more than most trades, because the labor went in first. Without stored-material billing and a front-loaded schedule of values, you pay for the middle of every job out of working capital.
Copper and Gear Bid on Last Year's Numbers
Copper traded at $5.92 per pound in May 2026, up 24.75 percent year over year. A 50 percent copper tariff has been in effect since August 2025, and the projected global deficit is near 150,000 tons. Gear is worse than the wire. Panels quote at 16 weeks or more. Medium-voltage gear is effectively sold out through 2028 in many channels, and transformers quote around 128 weeks. Sign a fixed-price bid with no escalation clause and no date-stamped basis and you've taken an unhedged commodity position. OEM deposits of 10 to 30 percent leave your account years before the gear ever bills.
Service and Construction Inside One P&L
Service work is high-margin small tickets. Construction is low-margin large contracts on GC paper. Blend them in one set of books and you can't tell which side is funding the other, so you price both wrong. Service gets bid like construction and construction gets bid like service. Electrical overhead is 16 percent of revenue at $1M to $5M, the heaviest of the trades on this site, because vehicles, lifts and tooling are all in overhead. One blended rate across both divisions puts that overhead on the wrong work.
Receivables at 120 Days
Pay-when-paid pushes the wait downstream, and electrical pays for it, because its labor went in before anybody else's. Lien and bond claim deadlines get missed when nobody calendars them at signing. Retainage goes into the same AR bucket as current billing, so nothing tells you what's held and what's late. Collections happen when the owner gets angry. That's how an electrical receivable reaches 120 days. A receivable at 120 days is a loan you're making to a GC at zero percent.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for electrical clients by phase: temporary power, feeders and distribution, branch rough-in by area or floor, gear set, devices and trim-out, testing, and punch. Each code matches a category in the estimate, so labor, material and equipment post where the bid was built. A foreman logging hours at the end of the day fills the same bucket the estimator priced. So you compare actual against estimated directly, with nothing to reconstruct three months later.
Actual burdened labor cost per phase is compared weekly to the estimated rate from the bid. Any phase more than 10 percent over estimate for two weeks in a row gets flagged for review. You find the cause in the cost code detail. The conversation is now about branch rough-in on one floor at one crew size, and a superintendent can act on that this week. The same conversation at closeout is a post-mortem.
Long-lead gear gets its own cost codes and its own billing path. Deposits of 10 to 30 percent post as prepaid gear or stored material, so you can see how much of your cash is held in an OEM production slot. On the bid side, escalation and tariff language goes into every estimate. Index the clause to a published copper reference, date-stamp the basis, and treat buyout timing as a decision with a cash cost. Any fixed-price work longer than a quarter gets the clause.
SPM sets service and construction up as divisions in ControlQore. Each has its own P&L, overhead allocation and margin reporting. Service tickets roll up by customer and by tech. Construction jobs roll up by GC. You see which division is paying the company's way, what each one earns after the overhead it really absorbs, and whether the service truck is funding a GC who pays at 120 days. Then you price each division from its own numbers.
On public work, fully burdened rates by classification get built before the bid goes out, so an audit doesn't find the error later. Fringe handling and classification mapping are set once. Certified payroll is reported weekly against those classifications. Job costing keeps the burdened rate, so one Davis-Bacon job compares to the next. SPM sets up the rates and reviews the job cost side. We don't do payroll. Your payroll provider processes it. Misclassification takes margin back retroactively, so the rates get set right before anything is filed.
Every lien and bond claim deadline is calendared the day the contract signs. Retainage is tracked as its own class, apart from current AR, so you know what's held, what's late and when each piece releases. Collections follow a fixed schedule, with clean waivers and on-time billing behind them. The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete. A bonding agent or a banker can read it without a cleanup pass first.
THE OUTPUTS, LISTED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SOFTWARE INVOICE.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. ControlQore comes with Strategic and Platinum, and it never appears as its own line item on an SPM invoice. Which tier you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk.
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.
We build your plan every month. Your team does the work.
You get the CFO work: job costing built to match the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, WIP every month, and a monthly meeting that ends with decisions.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
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.
We build the plan, track it and adjust it every month.
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.
Our team does the bookkeeping and the reconciliations. We don't do payroll.
Strategic, plus a controller who handles payables and receivables the way an in-house controller would. You approve every payment.
We manage the money side for you, every week.
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.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
