CONTROLQORE FOR MECHANICAL CONTRACTORS.
Generic accounting software can't separate sheet metal, pipe, and controls cost inside one mechanical contract, bill an equipment deposit as its own line, or tell you whether service is funding construction. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for mechanical contractors uses divisional cost codes by discipline, meaning sheet metal fabrication, pipe, and controls, with equipment kept separate from labor in every report. Equipment deposits, storage, and rigging are set up as their own schedule of values lines, so the money between deposit at release and payment at delivery is billed instead of financed. Service and construction run as separate divisions with separate P&Ls. The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete, and retainage at 5 to 10 percent is tracked by job.
One mechanical contract holds three labor markets: sheet metal fabrication, pipe crews, and controls technicians, each with its own cost curve. A single job total tells you the job made money or it didn't. It never tells you that the pipe crew carried the sheet metal shop for four months, or that controls ran 300 hours past the estimate while the pump work covered for it. Mechanical contractors at $1M to $5M net 7.5 percent before taxes on the SPM 48-trade dataset against a CFOS target of 11 percent, and the trade's ceiling of 10.5 percent at $25M to $50M is the best of the 48. That distance is a measurement problem before it's a pricing problem.
THE NUMBERS GENERIC SOFTWARE MISSES.
WHAT IT IS.
ControlQore is a job costing and WIP platform for commercial subcontractors at $1M to $12M that tracks cost by job, division, and cost code, so a mechanical contractor can read cost per discipline, meaning sheet metal, pipe, and controls, on each phase of a job while the phases are still overlapping.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
Three Shops Priced as One Number
Sheet metal, pipe, and controls are three separate businesses inside one mechanical price, and generic software reports them as one job cost. Phases overlap for months, so a discipline running long is covered by a discipline running well right up until closeout. Without divisional cost codes there's no way to know which shop earns and which one rides, which means next year's bid repeats this year's mistake at a bigger number.
Equipment Deposits Financed Instead of Billed
Chillers quote 20 to 85 weeks in 2026, with commercial chilled-water systems benchmarked at 48 to 60 weeks, and custom air handlers at 14 to 24 weeks. The deposit goes out at release, storage and insurance carry the middle, and the pay application catches up at delivery only if the schedule of values was written to allow it. When it wasn't, the mechanical contractor is running a procurement bank for the GC out of its own operating cash, for most of a year, at no markup.
Service and Construction in One Blended P&L
Service pays in small amounts on short cycles and carries the stronger margins. Construction pays in large amounts on pay-app terms with retainage held behind it. Blended books let one fund the other for years without anybody deciding to do it, and the trade's best-in-dataset net ceiling belongs to operators who split the book and manage both on purpose. One P&L across both prices both wrong.
One Burden Rate Across Union, Nonunion and Prevailing Wage
Mechanical carries burden in two flavors, union and nonunion, and public jobs put fitters, sheet metal workers, and service technicians on one certified payroll across multiple classifications. A single blended burden rate posts the wrong labor cost to every one of those cost codes at once. The estimate that gets calibrated off those numbers is then wrong in both directions, and nobody can tell which jobs were the profitable ones.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for mechanical clients by discipline first and phase second: sheet metal fabrication and install, pipe by system, controls, equipment set and rigging, startup, and commissioning. Equipment posts to its own codes and never inside a labor code, because equipment dominates the cost while labor dominates the risk and blending them hides both. Weekly reporting reads each discipline against its own estimate on each phase, and a discipline running more than 10 percent over for two consecutive weeks gets flagged for review.
SPM reviews the schedule of values before the subcontract is signed and recommends the lines the equipment float requires: deposits billable at release, stored and off-site equipment billable with the insurance and inspection provisions the GC will ask for, and rigging as its own line rather than folded into install labor. The procurement calendar is then mapped onto the 13 week cash flow forecast, so the deposit and the delivery are both visible as cash events before either one happens.
ControlQore is set up with service and construction as two divisions, each with its own cost codes, its own overhead allocation, and its own P&L. Monthly reporting shows gross margin and cash cycle for each one side by side. Once the two are apart, the question of which book is funding which stops being a suspicion and becomes a number you can act on, which is the whole reason this trade's ceiling is where it is.
SPM builds separate burden rates for union and nonunion labor and for each prevailing wage classification the company works under, rather than one blended rate across all of them. Hours posted by a fitter, a sheet metal worker, and a service technician each carry the burden that classification genuinely costs. Job costing then reads at true burdened cost, and the closeout comparison on a public job stays comparable to the next public job and not to an average of everything.
The WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete on live ControlQore data. Underbilled positions, meaning work performed and not yet billed, trigger a corrected pay application. Overbilled positions flag jobs where billing has run ahead of production, which on a long mechanical job with equipment in it's easy to do without noticing. Retainage at 5 to 10 percent is tracked by job so the closeout cash is a scheduled event.
THE OUTPUTS, LISTED.
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.
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