CONTROLQORE FOR PRECAST CONCRETE.
Generic accounting software can't report cost per bed-day, spread a purpose-built mold across the castings it produces, or tell you how much finished working capital is held in the yard this week. ControlQore can.
ControlQore for precast contractors uses cost codes by production phase: engineering and shop tickets, mold build and setup, casting by bed, curing and finishing, yard inventory, freight by route, and erection. It tracks cost per bed-day against the rate the quote assumed. Mold cost is spread across the castings a mold produces. The first order doesn't pay for all of it. Finished pieces held in the yard are reported as a working capital position, and the WIP schedule is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete.
A precast plant is a factory paid like a subcontractor. You spend the money at casting. Construction terms pay you at delivery and erection. Every finished piece in the yard is your working capital in concrete until a crane picks it up. A monthly income statement can't tell you what a bed cost to operate or which pieces are financing the schedule. Cost codes built by bed and by mold turn plant hours into a bed-day rate you can quote from. They turn yard inventory into a figure you can take into a stored-materials billing talk while the pieces are still in the yard.
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 precast producer can read cost per bed-day and cost per piece cast while the elements are still moving through the plant.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG.
No Cost Per Bed-Day
Plant capacity is beds and molds, and unit cost follows how much they're used. Purpose-built molds have to be spread across the castings they produce. Bed-days are the plant's crew-days. Published plant research points to equipment breakdown as the main cause of task-time variance. QuickBooks reports total cost by job, which tells you nothing about what a bed cost to operate last week. The 22 percent gross margin benchmark for this trade at $1M to $5M comes from the nearest comparable trade, and nobody measured it on precast plants. That's one more reason for a plant to use its own bed-day rate.
A Factory Paid Like a Subcontractor
Precast is manufacturing. Elements are cast to the erection sequence, cured, finished and stored in the yard weeks or months before they ship. You spend the money at casting, and construction payment terms pay you at delivery and erection milestones. So a yard of finished pieces is working capital in concrete. Without stored-materials billing that covers the insurance, marking and inspection provisions an owner will demand, the plant pays for the whole stretch between casting and crane day.
The Change That Re-Casts a Piece
A field change on cast-in-place concrete is a saw cut. On precast it can be a scrapped piece, a re-booked bed and a resequenced erection. That's why the published schedule advice in this trade is to bring the precaster in before bid award. When engineering, shop tickets and design-freeze milestones aren't on the schedule of values or costed as their own phase, the re-cast gets booked as a plant efficiency problem. It never gets priced as a change order.
Freight Priced as a Percentage
Transport cost limits how far a plant can ship, and so its potential market. Oversize permits, lowboy trailers, route surveys for bridge clearances, escort costs and delivery windows timed to a crane make freight a priced engineering problem per route. A bid that prices hauling as a percentage of contract value, with no route plan, gives away the difference on every load. Nothing in a monthly P&L will tell you which routes did it.
WHAT WE BUILD.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes for precast clients by production phase: engineering and shop tickets, mold build and setup, casting by bed, curing and finishing, yard inventory, freight by route, and erection. Labor, material, mold cost and freight post to the correct phase on the correct job. Your costs then read in the order the plant works, and not in the order the invoices post.
Bed and mold are set up as job attributes, so hours and machine time post to the bed they were used on. ControlQore divides burdened cost by bed-days used and reports cost per bed-day against the rate the quote assumed. Mold cost is spread across the castings a mold produces. The first order doesn't pay for all of it. So the first job off a new mold doesn't read as a loss, and every later one doesn't read better than it is.
Finished pieces are tracked in ControlQore as cast, cured and awaiting delivery, at the cost already spent. That total is the working capital the plant has tied up in concrete. It goes on the 13 week cash flow forecast as its own line. SPM also reviews every new subcontract schedule of values before signing. SPM pushes for engineering and mold setup as early billable lines, casting milestones billed against inspected yard inventory, and delivery and erection as the final payments.
Design-freeze milestones go on the schedule of values. A re-cast gets its own cost code, so the scrapped piece, the bed time booked a second time and the erection resequencing are costed as one event. When the change order talk comes, you have a cost record behind the number. A late decision on precast means a piece already cast, and the contract is the only place to price that before it happens.
The WIP schedule for precast clients is produced monthly from cost-to-cost percentage complete by job. Casting and curing cost real money, so percentage complete follows money already spent in the plant. It doesn't jump when the first truck leaves the yard. Underbilled positions, meaning work performed but not yet billed, trigger a corrected pay app. Overbilled positions flag jobs where billing is ahead of production. That happens easily on work sequenced to somebody else's crane.
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.
