Financials that show which jobs actually make money.

Profitable on paper and profitable in your bank account are two different things. Your P&L might show a good number, but if you can't tell which jobs made money and which lost it, you don't actually know. Real profitability requires job costing: labor with burden, materials, sub costs, and equipment allocated to each job. We build that for you so you stop guessing. Most contractors find out within 60 days that one or two service lines are quietly bleeding them.

Growth eats cash. You buy materials before the customer pays. Payroll runs every two weeks regardless of when receivables clear. New trucks need cash today and earn it next quarter. Busy looks good on revenue but feels like drowning on cash. The fix is forward-looking cash forecasting that shows you when cash gets tight 90 days out, so you can stage purchases, invoice faster, and stop waking up at 3 AM worried about payroll.

Job costing is the process of tracking every dollar spent on a specific job, broken down by labor (with burden), materials, sub costs, and equipment. Contractors who don't do real job costing are running their business on the bank balance, which tells you almost nothing about where money is actually made or lost. Job costing answers which crews are most profitable, which service lines have the best margins, and which customers you should consider firing. It's the foundation every other financial decision rests on.

A bookkeeper records what already happened. An accountant files your tax return. A fractional CFO tells you what to do about the numbers before you make the decision. Most contractors have a bookkeeper and a tax CPA. Nobody in that setup is helping them think strategically about pricing, growth, hiring, or cash. That's the gap a fractional CFO fills. Under $500k in revenue, a bookkeeper is usually enough. Above that, the lack of CFO-level guidance starts costing you real money.

When you cross $500k in gross revenue and you can't confidently answer questions like which jobs are profitable, what your cash position is next month, and whether hiring another crew is the right move. If those answers come from gut feel, you're ready. Most contractors wait too long, usually until they have a cash crisis or a missed tax bill. A fractional CFO is cheaper to add than it is to dig out of a problem they would have prevented.

Five numbers cover most of it. (1) Gross margin by service line, so you see which work is actually making money. (2) Job profitability for any project over $10k, so big losers don't hide in the average. (3) Cash on hand and days of cash runway, so you know how long you can survive a slow month. (4) Accounts receivable aging, so you collect before it becomes a problem. (5) Labor utilization rate, so you know whether your crews are billable enough to justify their cost. Track these monthly. Make decisions from them.

We start by mapping your chart of accounts to how a trades business actually operates, not the generic small business template QuickBooks ships with. Then we tag historical transactions to the right jobs, categorize expenses correctly, reconcile bank and credit card accounts that have been ignored, and rebuild your job costing structure from the ground up. Most cleanups take 30 to 60 days. Heavily mixed-up books with multiple entities or years of catch-up take longer. We tell you the timeline after we look at your file.

Both, with a preference for the work a GC subs out. We do our best work for electricians, plumbers, HVAC, roofers, landscapers, framers, and other crew-based trades. We also work with smaller general contractors doing custom builds and remodels. The financial mechanics are different (GCs deal with WIP, retainage, and multi-sub coordination) but our approach scales. If you're a true large-volume GC, talk to us about whether we're the right fit.

30 to 60 days is typical from the start of onboarding. We give you a firm timeline after we look at your QuickBooks file in the discovery call. Heavier cleanups, like multiple entities, multiple years of catch-up, or transitioning off a different accounting system, can take longer. While we clean, you still get monthly reporting on whatever data is reliable, so you're not flying blind during the rebuild.

Gross profit is revenue minus direct costs (labor, materials, subs, equipment used on the job). Net profit is what's left after gross profit minus overhead (office, admin, owner pay, insurance, marketing, debt service). For a contractor, gross margin in the 30 to 50 percent range is typical depending on trade and service mix. Net margin of 8 to 15 percent is healthy. If your gross margin looks fine but net is thin, your overhead is eating you. That's a problem to surface before it becomes a cash problem.