WHAT A PM OWNS, AND WHAT HE CANNOT.
A project manager can move four things on a job: labor efficiency against the bid hours, material quantity against the takeoff, change order capture before the work is performed, and honest percent complete on the pay application. He can't move the price the job was sold at, the payment terms in the subcontract, the burden and overhead applied to his cost report, or when the general contractor pays. Hold him to the first four and job margin improves. Hold him to all eight and he learns that the report is a scorecard he can't win, which is where padding and quiet disengagement come from.
The fastest way to lose a good project manager is to review him monthly against a margin that was decided by an estimator, a contract and an overhead rate before he ever saw the job.
WHAT IT MEANS.
PM financial accountability is a boundary: the project manager answers for the job costs he can influence once the work is his, and not for the decisions made before he got it, which means the bid, the subcontract terms and the overhead rate sit with the office.
Every contractor who has tried to put a project manager on the numbers has met the same wall. The reports go out, the first review is tense, the PM disputes a figure, somebody says the numbers are the numbers, and within three months the review is a formality nobody reads beforehand. That sequence is almost never about the PM's character. It's about being measured on a total that contains four results he controls and four he doesn't, with no way to separate them from his side of the table. Draw the boundary first and the same PM will run the report himself.
WHERE ACCOUNTABILITY TURNS INTO BLAME.
The PM is reviewed on gross margin, which he only partly controls
Gross margin on a job is the price it sold at minus what it cost to build. The PM had nothing to do with the first half. A job bid at 18 percent that should have been bid at 24 is going to review badly every month for its whole duration, and every one of those conversations teaches the PM that the report describes something other than his work. Review him on cost against budget by phase, which is his, and review the bid separately with the person who wrote it.
Burden and overhead reach his report and move without warning
A PM opens the job cost report and his labor line moved four percent with no change in the field, because the burdened rate was recomputed or the overhead absorption basis changed. From his chair the report is unreliable. From the office chair nothing happened. This is the single most common reason a project manager stops believing job costing, and the fix is to show him his phases in hours as well as dollars, because hours are his and dollars are partly somebody else's.
He is held to change orders he was never authorised to price
A PM told to protect margin, then required to route every change through an estimator who is three weeks behind, will perform the work to keep the schedule and document it later or never. Then the margin conversation happens and the undocumented work is his fault. The accountability was real and the authority was missing, and in that arrangement the company gets what it set up: work performed, no change order, and a project manager who has learned not to raise it.
The data reaches him monthly and the window is weekly
An efficiency problem on a phase can be recovered in roughly the first third of that phase, while there's sequence left to change. A cost report delivered at month end, six weeks after the phase started, reaches him after the window has closed. Holding somebody accountable for a result he was told about too late to change is the same thing as holding him accountable for the past, and it produces defensiveness rather than management, in anybody.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Hours booked to a phase against hours earned at the production rate the bid assumed. This is the cleanest thing a PM owns, it's measured in hours rather than dollars so no rate change can distort it, and the usual causes when it moves are all his to manage: access, sequence, rework and crew loading. A variance over ten percent for two consecutive weeks is the point at which it becomes a conversation, because one week is noise.
Units installed against units bought against units the estimate carried. Waste, over-ordering, theft and remobilisation for short material are all field results, and a PM who sees his own quantity variance weekly manages it. Priced separately from the material rate, which he doesn't control, because purchasing negotiated that and a price increase isn't a field failure.
The count and dollar value of scope changes documented and priced before crews performed them, against the count identified after. This is the highest value single thing a project manager does financially and it's entirely his, provided he has the authority to price and submit. Measure it as a ratio rather than a total, since a job with forty changes and thirty eight captured is a better result than a job with three changes and one captured.
The difference between the percent complete he certifies and the percent complete the cost and the field agree on. A PM under margin pressure who reports optimistic completion produces a job that looks fine for months and fades at closeout, which is where profit fade comes from. Measured backwards after the fact: how far off was his eighty percent when the job finished. A PM whose percent complete is reliably honest is worth more than one whose jobs look better.
The contract value, the bid production rates, the contingency and the margin the job was sold at were all set before he got it. So were the subcontract terms: pay-when-paid, retainage percentage, payment timing, notice periods and the schedule of values breakdown. Every one of those moves the job's financial result and none of them is available to him. They belong in a bid review and a contract review, with the people who own them.
The burdened labor rate, the overhead absorption basis and the equipment rates charged to his job are office arithmetic. The rate variance on his labor line isn't a field result at all, and holding him to it's holding him to a wage stack and a crew mix decided elsewhere. Collection is the same: whether the general contractor pays in 30 days or 95 is a customer relationship and a subcontract, and a PM chasing a check is a project manager doing somebody else's job badly.
Nothing, if the cost codes were built against the estimating assemblies, because the phase level report already carries budget hours, actual hours, budget quantity and actual quantity. The change order ratio is a count. Percent complete accuracy is one comparison at closeout. Four figures, weekly, on one page per PM. Most companies don't have it because the chart of accounts produces blended job totals instead of phases, which is a structural problem upstream of the PM entirely rather than a question of effort.
THREE MOVES, AND THE FIRST IS A CONVERSATION.
One page: these four results are yours, these four are ours, and here is the review where each set gets discussed. Doing it in writing changes the first review from a defence into a working session, because the argument about what's fair has already been settled in a calmer moment. It also commits the office, which is the half that usually goes unsaid: if the burdened rate is wrong, that's the office's variance to explain, in front of the same people.
Change order capture is only his if he can price and submit within a day or two. Labor efficiency is only his if he can move crews and sequence. Material quantity is only his if he can control the order. Where the company won't delegate one of those, that result can't be on his scorecard, and the honest move is to take it off rather than to hold him to something he has to ask permission for. Accountability and authority are the same size or the arrangement fails, and it fails without a sound for about two quarters before anybody says so.
Weekly is for management, monthly is for accountability. The weekly report exists so the PM can act inside the window where a phase is still recoverable; the monthly review exists so results get discussed with the person who owns them. A monthly cadence on its own gives him twelve chances a year to manage a job and no chance to manage a phase. Books closed by the tenth is what makes the monthly half credible, because a review off stale numbers is a review of the wrong month.
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. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
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.
