WHAT A MOBILIZATION CHARGE REALLY IS.
A mobilization charge is the money that pays you to get set up to work, and it belongs on the contract. It covers equipment moves, staging and temporary facilities, bond premiums, permits, submittal work and the first crew days that produce nothing billable. On civil and public work you spend it 60 to 90 days before the first pay application clears. On a $2M dirt job that's $150K to $200K spent before a dollar comes back. DOT and federal owners often cap mobilization at 5 to 10 percent of contract value and release it in stages as the job earns. If you put it into unit prices, you've agreed to fund the start of the job yourself and recover it slowly, one production quantity at a time.
Underbilling mobilization is the most common cash problem contractors cause themselves in a job's first month. The fix happens at bid time and costs nothing. A separate schedule of values line for mobilization, billed on the first pay application, moves the same contract dollars to the front of the job. Nobody pays you more and no margin changes. You get paid in the order you spend, and a growing subcontractor needs that to stay solvent.
Next step: Equipment cost basis calculator. Price the equipment side of mobilization from what each machine costs you: hourly, daily, weekly and four week rates per unit.
Then: Schedule of values template. Put mobilization on its own line so pay app one bills it.
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WHAT IT MEANS.
A mobilization charge is the contract line that pays a subcontractor for getting set up to perform work. It covers equipment moves, staging, temporary facilities, bond premiums, permits and startup labor that produces no billable production.
Mobilization is payment for work already performed. The work is putting a crew, a machine, a permit and a temporary facility onto a site that had none of the four. That makes the line defensible in a negotiation. You're asking to be paid for the first thing you did.
Demobilization and remobilization are separate events and need separate treatment. Demobilization is the cost of getting off the site at the end. It earns nothing unless it's priced and billed at closeout. Remobilization happens when a schedule falls behind or a room reopens for somebody else's late fix. The crew comes back and does the same setup twice for one payment.
WHERE THE FIRST MONTH GOES WRONG.
It's folded into the unit prices
The startup cost is spread across every unit price in the bid, so it comes back only as production gets billed. The month you spend the most is the month you recover the least, and the recovery finishes around the time the job does. The total contract value is the same either way. The difference is whether you finance the first sixty days.
There's no mobilization line on the schedule of values
If the schedule of values has no mobilization line, you have nothing to bill against on pay application one, however much you spent. The line has to exist in the contract documents before the first billing cycle. So you ask for it at bid time and in negotiation. Asking for it in month two is asking for a change order to something nobody agreed was in scope.
Remobilization and demobilization are never billed
Big iron moves in before the first dollar bills, and on the trades that finish last it moves in more than once. A crew that grids a room, leaves, and comes back for somebody else's late above-ceiling fix has mobilized twice and been paid once. Demobilization at closeout has the same problem in reverse. It's all cost with no production behind it, so if it's not its own line it's a donation.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Fuel, bond premiums, equipment moves and payroll come due 60 to 90 days before pay application one clears. On a $2M dirt job that's $150K to $200K spent before the first dollar comes back. Margin isn't the cause, and no amount of cutting the bid improves it. The question is which line of the contract pays for the first sixty days.
Public owners cap mobilization and pay it in stages. DOT and federal owners often cap it at 5 to 10 percent of contract value. California PCC 10264 releases 50 percent of bid mobilization once 5 percent of the contract is earned, 75 percent at 10 percent earned, and 95 percent at 20 percent earned. So even a properly billed mobilization line on public work only covers part of the startup spend. The rest is a cash forecast problem.
Take a $500,000 job with $40,000 of real startup cost. Spread that $40,000 across the unit prices and bill 8 percent of the contract in month one. You recover 8 percent of it, which is $3,200 against $40,000 already spent. You're $36,800 out. Put the same $40,000 on its own schedule of values line and bill it on pay application one, and you recover all of it in the first cycle. Same contract, same profit, and a $36,800 difference in what you funded yourself.
HOW IT GETS BILLED IN THE RIGHT ORDER.
The mobilization line gets built into the schedule of values before production billing starts. It's sized from the startup cost the estimate already shows. On public work it gets sized to the cap the owner publishes, and the staged release is modeled. That work is done at bid time.
Demobilization goes on a separate line released at closeout, so the cost of getting off the site has revenue behind it. It's small money on one job and a full point of margin across a year of jobs. Most contractors have never billed it once, so it seems generous when a GC agrees to it.
Every return trip gets logged as an event with the reason and the date. A remobilization claim is won with documentation. Room-readiness sign-offs and above-ceiling inspection dates are the record that makes a second trip billable. Without the log, you absorb the second trip and nobody can prove otherwise.
The 13 week cash forecast includes the mobilization spend and the expected pay application timing for every job about to start. So you know ahead of time about a month with three startups at once. The forecast is where a contractor finds out that the problem is two jobs starting in the same month. Either job alone is fine. Starting one of them a fortnight later costs nothing and changes the whole quarter.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. We don't bill by the hour, and we don't do payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is in the table.
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.
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