Material prices moved. Your bids did not. That gap is the whole problem.

• 01

  Material cost exposure on fixed bids

  Costs tracked month over month against what you bid, so the squeeze is visible while you can still reprice.

• 02

  Aged receivables you can actually chase

  A standing report of who owes what and how late they are. Owners routinely collect money they had written off.

• 03

  Payroll across mixed rates

  Different rates, overtime, prevailing wage jobs. Handled accurately rather than approximately.

• Electrical

  Materials pricing has been all over the place the last couple years and I was eating it on fixed-bid work without realizing how bad. Seeing it laid out month-over-month is what finally made me change how I bid.

• Electrical

  My daughter was doing the books part-time between her classes and both of us knew it wasn't working. Handing it off wasn't just a business decision, it took a real strain off our family. Should have done it two years earlier.

• Electrical

  I do a lot of commercial work where I'm waiting 30-60 days to get paid. I never had a clear picture of what was owed to me at any given moment. Now there's a report that tells me exactly who's late, and I actually chase it. Collected $58,000 I'd basically written off.

All client results

• How do I track material cost exposure on fixed-bid work?+

  Record material cost against what you bid, job by job, and report the gap month over month. On fixed-price work every movement in material price comes straight out of margin and it leaves quietly — you only notice at year end when the profit is not there. Tracked monthly, you can see the squeeze while there is still time to reprice future bids.

• What should I do about slow-paying commercial customers?+

  Start with an aged receivables report every month, which most contractors do not have. Then invoice the day work completes rather than at month end, get the purchase order number before starting, confirm the accounts payable address rather than sending to your site contact, and call at day seven to confirm the invoice is in the system. Most late payment is a process failure, not a refusal.

• How is payroll handled across mixed and prevailing wage rates?+

  Reconciled monthly against the books rather than checked at year end, with field wages in cost of goods sold and office wages in overhead. Keeping them in one account makes gross margin meaningless. Prevailing wage work needs its own records, and those records are also what a workers comp audit will ask for.

• What does the free first month include for an electrical contractor?+

  Your most recent complete month done in full: categorized and reconciled, a P&L and balance sheet, an aged receivables report, material cost against bid where the data supports it, and a one-page summary. A US CPA reviews and signs it. Two days, no card, yours to keep either way.