WHAT WE FIND IN YOUR FIRST 30 DAYS
The SPM Financial Diagnostic is a structured review of the six places construction subcontractors lose money before they ever see it on a P&L: billing lag, WIP distortion, overhead rate accuracy, AR aging buckets, job cost structure, and the cash flow forecast gap. We don’t wait for clean data. By day 30 we’ve identified what’s broken, named the dollars in motion, and started fixing it while the system migration runs underneath.
Most subcontractors don’t need another opinion. They need someone to walk in, look at the same six things every time, and say what’s actually wrong. Six categories. Same review every engagement. Different specifics every business.
YOU ALREADY KNOW SOMETHING’S OFF
You’re busy. You’re winning work. The bank account doesn’t reflect it. Vendors are calling. Payroll feels tighter than it should. The line of credit creeps up every month and you can’t pinpoint why.
You’ve probably been told to “get better books.” That’s the wrong answer. Better books tell you what already happened. The cash is gone by the time the P&L confirms it. What you need is a diagnostic that names the operational failures producing the financial symptoms — before any new software or accountant gets involved.
The SPM diagnostic is what we run in the first 30 days of every engagement. Six categories. Specific numbers. No vague “you should track that better” advice.
WHAT WE LOOK AT — EVERY ENGAGEMENT, EVERY TIME
HOW MANY DAYS BETWEEN WORK DONE AND INVOICE OUT
The first place subs lose money. Work happens in week 1, the pay app gets prepped in week 3, the GC approves in week 5, you bill in week 6. By the time you see the deposit, payroll has cycled three times against that work. We measure the actual days — from progress signed off to invoice sent — on every active job. If it’s over 7 days, that’s where the cash gap starts.
WHERE THE SCHEDULE OF VALUES IS LYING
WIP shows what each job is worth in earned revenue right now. Most subs we look at have WIP that’s overbilled early and underbilled late, or worse — based on a schedule of values nobody updates against actual costs. We check three things: are costs being booked to the right job, is percent complete based on actual work or just billing position, and are the change orders captured. WIP that’s wrong by 5% on a $4M company is $200K of phantom profit.
WHAT YOUR BIDS ASSUME VS. WHAT YOU ACTUALLY SPEND
Most subs are bidding 10% overhead. Most are running 18% to 32%. The gap is the leak. We pull the trailing 12 months of overhead spend and divide by trailing revenue. That’s the real number. Then we look at what’s assumed in active bids. If you’re bidding at 10% and running at 22%, every job is losing 12 points before it starts. Same revenue, no fix, no recovery.
WHAT’S COLLECTIBLE, WHAT’S STALE, WHAT’S A FIGHT
We pull AR and stratify it: current, 30, 60, 90, 90+. Then we walk each one over 30 days. Why is it sitting? Is it a missing change order? Is it a retainage question that never got resolved? Is it a GC playing pay-when-paid even though the contract says net 30? In the first 30 days of engagement, we’re usually finding $50K–$300K that’s already collectible — just nobody’s been calling on it.
CAN THE PM SEE THE JOB BEFORE IT’S OVER
Real job costing is accessible, live, and accurate. The PM pulls up the screen and sees where they are against the budget — right now. Most companies we walk into can’t do that. The numbers exist somewhere in accounting, two weeks behind, in a format nobody reads. We check whether labor is being coded to phase, whether equipment is allocated, whether subs are tied to their PO, and whether the PM has read access in their own software. If the answer’s no, that’s a Category 5 finding.
WHAT’S COMING IN, WHAT’S GOING OUT, NEXT 13 WEEKS
A 13-week cash flow forecast is the single most underused tool in subcontractor finance. We build it from the active job list: when is each pay app going out, when does each GC realistically pay, what payroll is locked in, what subs and material orders are committed. The output is a week-by-week cash position. If you can’t see 13 weeks out, you’re flying blind. Every contractor we’ve seen in MCA trouble had no forecast.
WE KNOW WHAT’S BROKEN BEFORE WE SEE A NUMBER
The diagnostic isn’t a discovery exercise. After 24 active trade specializations and 60+ engagements, the failure patterns are the same. A $4M concrete sub with cash problems has the same six categories breaking as a $7M civil contractor. The specifics differ. The categories don’t.
That’s why we don’t wait for clean data to start fixing. By day 7 we’ve named the dollars in motion. By day 30 we’ve started collecting overdue AR, restructured the billing rhythm, and identified the overhead gap. The system migration runs underneath all of that — not as a prerequisite to value, but as the long-term infrastructure to make the fixes stick.
The first 60 days are fixing. Day 60 is proof, not the start of trying.
THE DIAGNOSTIC DELIVERABLE
SIX-CATEGORY FINDINGS DOCUMENT
One page per category. What we found, what dollars are in motion, and what we’re doing about it in the first 60 days. No fluff, no consultant deck, no methodology section — just the findings and the fix sequence.
13-WEEK CASH FLOW FORECAST
Built from your active job list, your real GC payment patterns, and your committed payroll and AP. Updated weekly during onboarding so you can see exactly where the cash position is heading.
COLLECTIONS PRIORITY LIST
Every AR line ranked by collectibility and dollar size. We work the list with your team in week 2. Most engagements recover $50K–$300K in the first 30 days from invoices that were already collectible.
OVERHEAD RATE TRUE-UP
Your actual overhead percentage based on trailing 12 months. Compared to what your bids assume. This is the number that gets plugged into every estimate from day 31 forward.
BILLING REWORK PLAN
Where your billing rhythm is losing days. Specific changes to SOV structure, pay app timing, and submission cadence to compress the bill-to-cash cycle.
JOB COST STRUCTURE FIX
What needs to change so your PMs can read their own jobs in real time. Includes the cost code structure rebuild and the ControlQore setup if you’re migrating.
COMMERCIAL SUBS, $1M TO $12M
The diagnostic works for any commercial subcontractor or self-performing GC in the $1M–$12M revenue range. We’ve run it across 24 trade specializations — civil, concrete, electrical, SWPPP, underground utility, sitework, grading, masonry, framing, drywall, insulation, excavation, demolition, paving, structural steel, waterproofing, EIFS/stucco, concrete flatwork, plus the marine, fiber, telecom, flooring, interior, and security clusters.
It doesn’t work for: residential, under $1M revenue, or mechanical/plumbing/fire-protection/HVAC. Those trades have different financial structures and we don’t serve them.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
