PROCUREMENT TIMING IS A CASH DECISION.
Every material order you place is a cash commitment, and the timing of that commitment sets when the cash goes out. Put that next to your billing cycle and your collection lag and procurement timing decides how long you carry the cost before the money comes back. Order 10 weeks early on a $200K material package and you carry $200K for 10 extra weeks. Do it on three jobs at once and that's $600K of avoidable float.
Most subcontractors never calculate this number. They order when the supplier can guarantee availability, not when the cash forecast says it's affordable. That feels like good project management, because the material is in the yard and nobody is chasing a delivery truck, and it's expensive in a way that never appears on a job cost report. Carrying cost doesn't have a cost code. It turns up in the line of credit balance, the interest expense, and the Thursday afternoon call to a supplier asking for another two weeks.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Procurement timing is the decision of when to place a material order, and it sets the date cash leaves your business relative to the date you can bill for that material.
FOUR WAYS TIMING COSTS YOU CASH.
Ordering early to guarantee availability
The PM orders pipe 12 weeks before installation to make sure it's there. The supplier delivers in week 8 and the pipe sits in the yard for 4 weeks before the trench opens. That's four unnecessary weeks of carrying $180K in pipe cost. Multiply it across five jobs with the same ordering habit and the company is carrying $900K of avoidable float at any given time.
Overlapping procurement on multiple jobs
Three jobs mobilize in the same month and each PM places major material orders at the same time. The aggregate procurement payment is $520K hitting inside a 3 week window against a $400K line of credit. The company draws the full line, calls suppliers for short extensions, and spends the next 6 weeks managing the shortfall instead of managing the work. The jobs were never sequenced to stagger the procurement cash demand.
No stored materials billing in the SOV
Material gets delivered and there's no stored materials line in the SOV, so it sits until installation. Billing triggers at installation and collection runs 45 days after that, which puts 8 to 12 weeks between delivery and cash. With a stored materials line the billing event triggers at delivery, and that distance drops to 5 to 10 days. Same material, same job, same GC, and a completely different cash profile out of one SOV decision.
Procurement isn't in the cash forecast
The 13 week cash forecast gets built from billing collections, payroll, and overhead, and nobody mapped the $280K pipe order due in week 6. When it hits, it's a surprise, and the line of credit draw happens reactively. A draw planned 4 weeks before the payment is a financial decision, and a draw the week the payment is due is a cash crisis that looks like a bank account problem when it's a forecasting problem.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $200K material package ordered 10 weeks early means $200K carried for 10 extra weeks. On three jobs at once, that's $600K of avoidable float. Nothing about the work changed and nothing about the price changed, only the order date.
Three jobs mobilizing at once produced $520K of procurement payments inside a 3 week window against a $400K line of credit. The company drew the full line and still had to call suppliers for extensions. Staggering two of those start dates would have cost nothing.
THREE THINGS WE CHANGE.
For each major material order, start with the installation date and subtract the lead time. That result is the latest safe order date, and that's when the order goes in. The distance between latest safe and earliest comfortable is pure carrying cost, and on a 6 week lead time item ordered 10 weeks out you're carrying the full material value for 4 extra weeks because it felt better having it in the yard.
Every open purchase order goes into the cash forecast with its expected payment date, not its order date. Aggregate across all active jobs so you can see the weeks where two or three large payments stack up. Those weeks are line of credit draw candidates, and the draw gets planned 3 to 4 weeks in advance.
Any contract with more than $50K in material value that gets delivered before installation gets a stored materials line in the SOV, negotiated before contract execution. The billing event then triggers at delivery and the wait for cash compresses from weeks to days. Paired with procurement timing discipline, those two practices remove most of the avoidable cash crises that come out of material heavy work.
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.
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