Built for builders
Know which jobs make money. Before the job ends.
Most contractors find out a job lost money at closeout, when there's nothing left to do about it. I build the job costing, WIP schedules, and cash flow forecasting that show you margin while you can still act on it.
What I find inside contractors' books
The margin you see usually isn't the margin you have.
These are the patterns I see again and again in GC and trades books. Every one of them distorts the picture you're making decisions from.
Phantom margin
Field labor sitting in overhead instead of job costs. Gross margin looks great on paper because the biggest cost of doing the work never hits the jobs.
Fuel, equipment, and small tools in the wrong bucket
Job-site costs scattered through operating expenses. Each one is small. Together they quietly move real points of margin off your jobs.
Labor paid outside payroll, tagged to nobody
Checks and transfers to crews coded to the company instead of the job. You can’t price the next job right if you don’t know what labor cost on the last one.
Billing that lags the work
Billable costs piling up unbilled, draws out of sync with progress, and retainage you stopped tracking. Underbilling is you financing the owner’s project.
A WIP schedule built once a year, for the bank
If the WIP only exists at statement time, it isn’t a management tool. It’s a compliance document, and it isn’t helping you run the jobs.
Cash crunches between draws
Payroll is weekly. Draws are monthly, and pay-when-paid makes them slower. Without a forecast, the squeeze always feels like a surprise.
One report, run monthly
The WIP schedule is where the truth shows up.
Percentage of completion, earned revenue, and over or under billings, job by job. Built monthly and tied to clean job costing, it shows you where margin is drifting and where cash is stuck while there is still time to act.
| Job | Contract | Est. cost | % complete | Earned revenue | Billed to date | Over / (under) billed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverside Clinic TI | $1,840,000 | $1,508,000 | 62% | $1,140,800 | $1,196,000 | $55,200 |
| Maple St. Warehouse | $3,120,000 | $2,714,000 | 48% | $1,497,600 | $1,092,000 | ($405,600) |
| Eastgate Retail Pad | $960,000 | $782,000 | 91% | $873,600 | $902,400 | $28,800 |
That middle row is the one that matters. $405K of work performed and not yet billed is $405K of someone else's project financed on your working capital. It ties up cash you could be running the business with, and it usually goes unnoticed until the year-end statement. A monthly WIP catches it in week two.
The work
What I actually build for contractors.
Job costing that holds up
Cost code structure, Projects and Classes in QuickBooks, and labor allocated to jobs. Margin by job, visible monthly, not discovered at closeout.
Labor where it belongs
Field labor moved out of overhead and into job costs, including crews paid outside payroll. Your gross margin becomes a real number.
A monthly WIP schedule
Percentage of completion, over/under billings, and estimated cost to complete. Built as a management tool you actually use, not a year-end formality.
Cash flow forecasting
13-week cash visibility across draws, retainage, payroll, and supplier terms. The squeeze stops being a surprise.
Billing and draw hygiene
Unbilled charges cleared, draws synced to progress, retainage tracked to release. Cash comes in when the work goes out.
Clean monthly reporting
A month-end process that produces statements you can hand to a bank, a partner, or a buyer without apologizing.
Common questions
Asked by every contractor I talk to.
Do you replace my CPA?
No. Your CPA handles taxes and compliance, and I work alongside them. I handle the forward-looking side: job costing, cash flow forecasting, WIP schedules, and the decisions in between tax seasons. Most CPAs are glad someone is finally doing it.
Do you work inside QuickBooks?
Yes. Most of my contractor clients run QuickBooks Online. I build job costing with Projects and Classes, clean up the chart of accounts so labor and job costs land in COGS where they belong, and set up the reporting on top of it. If you run a construction-specific ERP, I work with that too.
What size contractors do you work with?
Generally $1M to $30M in revenue. Big enough that job-level visibility genuinely matters, small enough that a full-time CFO is not yet justified.
How do we start?
With a short call and a look at your books. I will tell you what I see, what I would fix first, and what working together would look like. If it is not a fit, you will know that quickly too.
Let's look at your jobs together.
Book a free 30-minute call. Bring a recent P&L and your gut feeling about which jobs are winners. I'll tell you what I'd look at first. No pitch.