CONTROLQORE FOR FIRE ALARM CONTRACTORS.
Generic accounting software can't cost a job by addressable device and circuit, hold panel programming apart from rough-in, or tell you what a failed acceptance test cost and whose incomplete work caused it. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for fire alarm contractors uses cost codes by device type and system function, meaning panel and power, initiating circuit rough-in, notification circuit rough-in, device installation by type, annunciators and modules, programming and sequence of operations, pre-test, and the witnessed acceptance test, to track cost per addressable device and per circuit. The base device and circuit count is logged in ControlQore at contract, so RFI-driven adds, relocated notification appliances, and plan-review code comments get priced as change orders when they're issued. Install, monitoring, and NFPA 72 inspection run as three divisions with separate P&Ls. The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete.
Fire alarm contractors at $1M to $5M net 7.5 percent on the SPM 48-trade dataset, and the CFOS target at that revenue is 11 percent before taxes. What sits between the two is usually not the bid. Fire alarm billing gates on one event the contractor can't schedule: one hundred percent of devices tested and witnessed on the marshal's calendar, with an NFPA 72 record of completion and every integrated trade ready at the same appointment. A shop that codes its device counts, its programming hours, and its retests by cause can price the next job from what the last one cost. A shop that can't is bidding from memory and hoping the first test passes.
THE NUMBERS GENERIC SOFTWARE MISSES.
WHAT IT IS.
ControlQore is a job costing and WIP platform for contractors that tracks cost by job and cost code, so a fire alarm subcontractor can read installed cost per addressable device and per circuit against the device count the estimate was built on.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
A Device-Priced Job With No Cost Per Device
Addressable fire alarm systems are priced by device and by circuit, then costed as a single job total. A building running initiating devices across several initiating circuits, notification appliances across several more, and a panel that took days to program can't be read out of one labor figure. The estimator priced the work per device and gets nothing per device back, so the only feedback the next bid receives is whether the last job felt tight. That's not a rate, and it doesn't improve anything.
Device Counts That Drift With No Base Log
Addressable systems move constantly after the contract is signed. RFI-driven device adds, relocated notification appliances, and revisions coming out of plan-review code comments all change the count, and each change is billable only if somebody can prove what the base count was. Without a logged count at contract, the adds get absorbed into install labor and reappear at closeout as an overrun nobody can explain. The work was done, the money was earned, and the change order was never written.
The Acceptance Test Is the Paycheck and It Is Not Coded
Fire alarm billing gates on AHJ acceptance: one hundred percent device testing witnessed by the inspector, an NFPA 72 record of completion, and every integrated trade ready at once, meaning sprinkler flow and tamper, elevator recall, HVAC shutdown, and door hardware. Retainage sits behind the marshal's signature. When pre-test, test, and retest hours all post to install labor, a failed first test costs the contractor twice: once in the crew hours it burns, and again because there's no record of whose incomplete work forced the retest.
NICET Levels Inside One Blended Labor Rate
The NICET ladder decides who can design a system, who can submit it for permit, who can program the panel, and who can run the witnessed test, and certified people are scarce. When every hour posts at one blended rate, the job cost can't tell the difference between a helper pulling wire and a certified designer resolving code comments. Certification cost and the scarcity premium then sit in overhead rather than in the burdened rate the bid was built on, and public work adds prevailing-wage classifications on top of that.
Monitoring and Inspection Blended Into Install Revenue
Monitoring accounts and NFPA 72 inspection contracts are the compounding side of a fire alarm business, and the adjacent security market prices recurring books at roughly 28x to 60x monthly recurring revenue. Install pays on construction terms behind the acceptance gate. Run through one P&L, the recurring book reads like a rounding error next to contract revenue, so it gets priced and managed like one while the thing it's worth goes unstated.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for fire alarm clients by device type and system function: panel and power, initiating circuit rough-in, notification circuit rough-in, initiating device installation, notification appliance installation, remote annunciators and modules, programming and sequence of operations, pre-test, witnessed acceptance test, and record of completion documentation. Labor and material post to the function that consumed them. Cost per addressable device and cost per circuit are calculated weekly against the estimate, by device type rather than in aggregate.
At contract execution SPM records the base device count and circuit count in ControlQore as the quantity the price was built on. Every add after that's priced against it: RFI-driven devices, relocated appliances, and revisions coming out of plan-review code comments. The log turns count drift into change orders while the reviewer's comments are still current, and not into an unexplained labor overrun at closeout. It also gives the estimator a closing count to compare against the bid count on the next job of the same type.
Pre-test gets its own cost code, because walking every device internally before the marshal sees it's cheaper than a retest on the marshal's calendar. Retest hours are coded by cause, so an elevator contractor who wasn't ready or a door hardware set that wasn't installed is documented as the reason rather than absorbed into fire alarm labor. Integration dependencies are tracked by trade in ControlQore, which turns the acceptance appointment into a schedule item with owners attached instead of a date everybody hopes holds.
Certification cost and the scarcity premium are recovered in burdened labor rates by NICET level rather than absorbed into overhead. ControlQore carries a rate by level, so design, programming, and witnessed testing cost what they cost both on the job and in the bid. When a job runs over, the variance report says whether it burned certified hours or helper hours. Those are two different problems with two different answers, and one blended rate can't tell them apart.
SPM sets up install, monitoring, and NFPA 72 inspection as three divisions in ControlQore, each with its own P&L and its own overhead recovery. Install is costed by device and circuit behind the acceptance gate. Monitoring is costed per account and inspection per system, against the recurring rate each one bills. The recurring book becomes a reportable asset with a margin the owner can state, which is the number that separates an install-only shop from a recurring-mix one.
The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete by job. Fire alarm jobs habitually sit near complete on cost with the final milestone unbilled while acceptance is pending, and the WIP reports that as the underbilled position it's instead of letting it read as a bad month. Overbilled positions flag jobs where billing has outrun installed devices. Both are visible in the same schedule a bonding agent or a banker asks for.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SOFTWARE INVOICE.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. ControlQore comes with Strategic, 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.
Pricing
| 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 rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
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 job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
