For general contractors
A sub with bad books becomes your schedule problem
When a sub goes sideways mid-job it lands on you: your schedule, your margin, sometimes your bond. It was a bookkeeping problem long before it was a field problem.
You already know which subs come back short. Now there is somewhere to send them.
What it costs you
What a sub with bad books costs you, specifically
None of this is about whether he can build. It is about whether the paperwork behind him can keep up with the job, and every one of these lands on your side of the line rather than his.
Your bid list shrinks to whoever has their paperwork together
A sub who cannot produce financials or a work-in-progress schedule cannot clear prequalification, whatever his crews can do. You end up choosing from who can pass the packet rather than who is best for the scope.
A sub who fails mid-job becomes your replacement cost
Your schedule, the premium you pay to bring someone in mid-scope, and the delay you carry downstream. His insolvency is his problem for about a week and yours for the rest of the job.
His billing decides when you get paid
Pay applications that arrive wrong or late stall your own draw, because your billing is assembled from theirs. One sub who cannot tie a G702 to the schedule of values can hold up a whole month.
His lapsed paperwork is your compliance gap
An expired insurance certificate or a missing lien waiver on the sub side does not stay on the sub side. It becomes your exposure on the project, and unreleased waivers can cloud title.
He discovers the loss at closeout, and you absorb the fight
A sub who cannot tell what a job is costing him finds out when it closes. A sub who finds out mid-project brings you a change order argument you either absorb or litigate.
Where you need bonded subs, his statements decide it
A surety writes against financial statements. If his cannot support the bond your project requires, the constraint is his bookkeeping rather than his capability, and it is your job that goes unbid.
What happens to the sub
What we actually do with a contractor you send us
The same work we run for any commercial contractor, aimed at the things that were failing your prequal packet.
Books structured for job reporting, and a close that closes
Most inherited contractor books were built to produce a tax return. The chart of accounts gets rebuilt for job-level reporting, and the month actually closes on a calendar.
G702 and G703 that tie to the schedule of values
Pay applications built from the same numbers the books hold, in the format you expect, so they stop coming back to him and stop holding up your draw.
Retainage tracked by contract, and change orders logged
Aged by contract rather than buried in receivables. Work performed against an unapproved change order exists as a tracked position from the day it happens rather than as a memory.
Certified payroll when he picks up public work
WH-347 and the state equivalents, with prevailing wage tracked by trade and locality. It arrives the first time he takes a public job, usually with no warning.
A WIP schedule and statements that survive a packet
The document your prequal asks for, and the one a surety reads if the job needs him bonded. Produced monthly rather than reconstructed when somebody asks.
The detail sits on the commercial pages rather than here: /commercial/subcontractors is written to him, and /commercial/compliance covers the documentation side.
The question your sub will ask before he calls
We do not keep your books, and we will not report on his
We do not keep the books of general contractors. Not yours, and not the GC your sub works for on his other jobs. That is a deliberate limit on who we take as a client rather than a rule about who inside the firm may look at what, and it exists so that the question your sub is going to ask has a one-sentence answer.
That answer is simply that his customer is not our client. There is no internal division of duties for him to trust, no wall he has to believe we maintain, and nothing anyone here has to choose not to look at. If you would rather have the mechanics as well: access in QuickBooks Online and Xero is granted per company file, and we are only ever in the file of the business that hired us.
It runs the other way too, and this is the part worth being blunt about. Introducing a sub to us does not give you a window into him. We do not report his financials, his margins, his job costs or his bid detail to you, we do not monitor him on your behalf, and we will not answer questions about him. What you get back is a sub whose paperwork keeps up with your job. What you do not get is his numbers.
Where the relationship exists we tell both parties it exists, and the same commitment is written into the engagement agreement. If you would rather we did not take a particular sub at all, say so and we will not.
The paperwork is the part you can actually fix.
What changes on your jobMaking an introduction
What you're actually committing him to
Four steps, and you're only responsible for the first one.
- 01
You make the introduction
An email is enough. You don't need to explain what we do, or vouch for the outcome.
- 02
An initial call with him
Half an hour on what his contracts look like and what's actually failing. No charge, no obligation either side.
- 03
The Financial Risk Assessment, free
Required before either side agrees to anything. He keeps the findings either way, nobody's invoiced, and you never see them.
- 04
Both sides decide
If he isn't a fit, he's told so rather than sold the smallest thing we have. That's what protects the credibility you just lent us.
Something to send him
The two documents to forward
You already prequalify subs and you already know which ones come back short. Forwarding these costs you nothing and commits him to nothing, and it is a more useful reply than telling him his paperwork was not good enough.
The Prequal Packet Checklist
Twenty-two items in four groups, with the nine financial ones marked and every line labelled by who produces it. Two pages. He can work it with whoever keeps his books.
Open the PDFThe Sample Reporting Pack
What those nine items look like when they are produced every month instead of reconstructed on request. Five pages, built for a fictional contractor so the schedules can be read in full.
Open the PDFBoth are free and neither one asks him for anything. There is no form in front of them on purpose: a document you forward should not arrive asking your contractor for his email address.
Who we are
Tom Woolley, Founder
Today CFO is a construction financial operations and advisory firm in Houston serving commercial contractors nationally. We are not a CPA firm and we perform no attest work.
Tom Woolley founded the firm after a prior software company exit. Before that he spent nearly six years at Nabors Industries, running job costing and logistics for construction. He traveled internationally to monitor builds, vendor supply chains, inventory, and job profitability in the field.
He holds an MBA rather than a CPA, and the orientation is deliberate: an operator's practice built around the finance function, not a compliance practice that added advisory later. Attest work goes to a CPA firm. Returns are reviewed and signed by credentialed preparers.
Most of our construction clients are commercial contractors. Not construction adjacent, not residential remodelers.
We run the whole function remotely from Houston. Job costing, field receipt capture, accounts payable through Bill.com, and the subcontractor documentation an insurance audit asks for.
We work in QuickBooks Online and Xero, and rebuild the chart of accounts for job-level reporting when it isn't already.
Questions
What partners ask before they introduce anyone
What does this cost me as the general contractor?
Nothing. There is no referral fee in either direction, and we do not invoice you for anything relating to a sub you introduce. We do not keep books for general contractors at all, which is the other half of the answer: there is no engagement of yours for this to affect.
What happens if a sub I send you is not a fit?
He gets told, and so do you. Some contractors are not carrying enough contract complexity for this to earn its keep, and standalone bookkeeping is attached to nothing, so we say that rather than sell him the smallest thing we have. Turning people away is what makes your introduction safe to make.
Do you work with my subs’ existing CPA?
Usually, yes. Most keep their CPA for the return and add this for the contract reporting, which is a different job. Where it makes more sense to consolidate we can, but it is not a requirement and we do not push it if the existing relationship is working.
Can you help a sub who is trying to get bonded for the first time?
That is one of the more common reasons a GC sends someone. A surety asks for financial statements and a current work-in-progress schedule, which is most of what your prequal packet asks for, so the two problems have largely the same answer. A first submission runs on a longer clock than a correction, because there is usually no schedule to fix, only one to build.
Send us a sub
Name the one whose paperwork keeps coming back short. We take it from there, he is told honestly whether it is a fit, and you are not invoiced for any of it.
Send us a sub