The situation
Ryan’s crew was booked six months out, yet the bank balance never seemed to grow. All costs went into one bucket, so he couldn’t tell a profitable kitchen from a bathroom that lost money.
What we did
We started with the questions Ryan actually asks: which jobs should I bid, and what should I charge?
- Set up job costing in QuickBooks so every material, labor hour and subcontractor bill is tied to a project.
- Moved crew payroll to weekly pay runs with time tracked by job.
- Built a monthly work-in-progress report that shows each open job’s budget, cost to date and expected margin.
- Reviewed his estimating template against real costs from the last 40 jobs.
The results
Bathrooms were underpriced by about 11 percent. After new pricing and a change in how change orders are billed, Hartley’s gross margin rose from 24 to 31 percent in twelve months.
“Now I bid with real numbers instead of gut feel. We turned down two jobs this year that I know would have lost money.”
