Over-billings you cannot see
Money in the account against work you have not performed yet. It spends exactly like profit right up until the job closes out and the cash has to come back from somewhere.
Borrowed from the next job
Pick a time Commercial construction only
Find out what your retainage and your WIP actually add up to.
Thirty minutes with a construction CFO, on your open contracts.
Pick a time 30 min · No cost · No obligation
Loading available times...
Rather write first? Email contact@todaycfo.com.
- What your retainage adds up to across your open contracts
- What is stalling your billing, and what a GC is actually asking for
- Whether your reporting is the constraint, or whether it is not
Houston, Texas, working nationally Subs and general contractors Tom Woolley, MBA
11:40pm Still building the pay app
The problem
The profit and loss is not the document that decides what you can carry
A generalist opens the profit and loss, sees a good month, and reports a good month. The work-in-progress schedule can be saying something completely different at the same moment. If nobody produces it monthly, the first person to read it properly is your underwriter.
Retainage nobody has totalled
Ten percent held across several contracts, on release schedules that live in other people’s systems. Nobody in your office can say what the number is today.
Your profit, in someone else’s accountA prequal packet that comes back short
Three years of financials and a current work-in-progress schedule. If the WIP does not exist until somebody asks for it, the job you wanted is decided by paperwork rather than by your price.
Jobs you never got to bidFour sentences
If you have said any of these, you already know where the problem is
Each one sounds like a paperwork complaint. Each one is a number. That gap is the whole of it, and it is why this stops being annoying and starts being expensive.
They are holding ten percent and I do not know what that adds up to.
That is your profit, sitting in someone else’s account, on a release schedule you have not been told. Across four contracts it is usually a bigger number than the owner guesses.
My pay app got rejected and I lost thirty days.
A G702 that does not tie to the schedule of values comes back, and the next billing window is a month away. You financed that month out of your own working capital.
I did the extra work, they never sent the change order, and now nobody wants to talk about it.
Work performed against an unapproved change order is cost with no revenue behind it. If it is not logged as performed and unapproved the day it happens, it quietly becomes a gift.
They want three years of financials and a WIP schedule. I do not have a WIP schedule.
That is a prequal packet coming back short, and it is the point where paperwork stops being annoying and starts deciding which jobs you are allowed to bid.
The call itself
Thirty minutes, and here is exactly what happens in them
What you bring
Roughly what you have open, roughly what is held in retainage, and the last pay application that came back if there was one. Estimates are fine. Nothing gets pulled out of your accounting file for this.
What we go through
Percent complete on your open jobs, what retainage adds up to across them, what is stalling your billing, and the accounting method your contracts are currently being reported under.
What you leave with
A straight read on whether your reporting is what is holding the business back, and what it would take to fix. If it is not, we say so on the call rather than book a second one.
What comes next, if it is a fit
The Financial Risk Assessment. Free, 86 checkpoints on your real books and your real contracts, with a findings call at the end. It is a required step before either side agrees to work together, and the findings are yours either way.
Before you book
This is a narrow service, so it is worth being blunt about who it is for
Book the call if you are
- Bonded specialty subs and small general contractors, roughly $3M to $8M, with 10 to 40 in the field
- Emerging commercial subs under a GC, roughly $1.5M to $3M, at first retainage or first pay application
- General contractors, roughly $5M to $15M, running work with subs underneath them
- Mechanical, electrical, concrete, steel, glazing and fire protection
Do not book if this is you
- Residential service and replacement work. No WIP, no retainage, no schedule of values, so about half of what we do would not apply to you
- Bookkeeping with nothing attached to it. No bond, no subs paid, no prequal, no exit horizon
- Above roughly $10M. At that point you need a CFO in the building, and we will tell you so
- A business that is not currently profitable. This is not a turnaround service
- A price-led buyer. If the deciding question is who is cheapest, we will lose and we should
What running with us looks like
One recurring deliverable, the Contractor Position Page
Every client, at every level, gets the same page every month, by the eighth business day, and it gets walked through with you on a quarterly call.
- Percent complete, and over or under billings, by contract
- Retainage position by contract, receivable and payable
- Contract margin against the estimate you bid
- Cash against profit, so the two stop getting confused
Who you are talking to
Tom Woolley, MBA
Six years running job costing and logistics inside construction, then a software company built and sold, before founding this firm. Degrees in Accounting and Computer Science alongside the MBA. Today CFO is a construction financial operations partner, not a CPA firm. Returns are prepared and reviewed by credentialed preparers on the team before they are filed.
You are booking time with him, not with a scheduler who hands you off afterwards.
Questions
What contractors ask before they book
Is this a sales call?
It is a working call. Thirty minutes on your contracts, your retainage position and what your reporting currently produces. Nothing gets scoped or quoted off a conversation, so there is nothing to sign at the end of it. If it is obvious we are not a fit, the useful thing is to say that inside thirty minutes rather than book a second call.
What do I need to have ready?
Roughly what you have open, roughly what is being held in retainage, and the last pay application that came back if there was one. Estimates are fine. Nothing needs to be pulled from your accounting file for a first call.
What happens after the call?
If both sides want to keep going, the next step is the Financial Risk Assessment: free, 86 checkpoints run on your real books and your real contracts, with a findings call at the end. It is a required step before either side agrees to work together, not an upsell and not a package selector. The findings are yours whether or not you go further.
I am not bonded. Is this still for me?
Yes. Plenty of contractors at this stage are not bonded, or were bonded once and did not enjoy it. Retainage, progress billing against a schedule of values, change orders and prequalification all arrive before a bond does, and they are what is costing you money now. If a bond request does come, the reporting that answers a prequal packet is most of what a surety asks for anyway.
Does this replace my CPA?
No, and we are not a CPA firm. Your tax preparer files the return and reports what already happened. This is the finance function underneath it: monthly close, job costing, work-in-progress, retainage, pay applications and the compliance that comes with commercial work. Most contractors need both, and we will say so rather than push you to consolidate.
Do you only work with contractors in Houston?
We are in Houston and we work with commercial contractors around the country. The contract reporting is the same wherever the job is. Certified payroll, prevailing wage and sales and use tax are state by state, and they get handled by locality.
Bring the last pay application that came back
That and your current contracts are enough for a first conversation. We will tell you what the retainage across them actually adds up to, what is stalling the billing, and whether this is worth paying anyone to fix yet. If it is not, we will say so.
Pick a time