ROOFING: THE INSURANCE MONEY TRAP

The first claim check pays actual cash value only. The recoverable depreciation is withheld until the job is complete and documented. Supplements can wait for weeks in an adjuster's queue. Every open claim is a receivable on someone else's schedule, so put claims tracking on the cash forecast.

Enough to pay full overhead through the quiet months, and at least one month of payroll as a floor. Demand stops for the season. Trucks, insurance and salaries don't. The strongest companies build up cash in the busy months on purpose.

Roofing contractors at $1M to $5M net about 7 percent before taxes on the SPM 48-trade benchmark dataset, rising to 13 percent by $25M to $50M. CFMA's 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker puts construction as a whole at 6.3 percent net income before taxes across all respondents, and the best-in-class top quartile at 11.9 percent. So a roofer at 7 percent is in the middle of the market. The CFOS target for roofing at $1M to $5M is 10.5 percent net profit before taxes, the trade average plus 3.5 points and never below 10. That's what pays for the payroll and the personal guarantees you signed. /construction-net-profit-margin-benchmarks has the roofing figure at your revenue band.

Three tiers, and which one you are in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. On Core we build your plan every month and your team does the work: job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a monthly meeting that ends in decisions, while your bookkeeper keeps doing the books. On Strategic we build the plan, track it and adjust it every month: our team does the bookkeeping and the bank reconciliations, and the job costing and WIP software is set up and managed for you, on your own online software or ours. On Platinum we manage the money side for you every week: our team handles your bills and receivables the way an in-house controller would, and you approve every payment. We don't do payroll.

Sixty days. We migrate your books back to the start of your last taxable year and build your job costing structure from scratch, and on Strategic and Platinum we set up the job costing and WIP software too. You're fully up and working in two months. The onboarding fee is one time, the same for every tier, and set by your revenue band.