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Practical finance resources for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, pest control, restoration, cleaning, security, maintenance, and other field services businesses. Know which jobs make money, protect cash, and scale crews without losing margin.
Two crews can run the same revenue and earn completely different profit. The difference is job costing, technician productivity, and pricing discipline — not how busy you are.
Most field services owners price off gut and gross revenue. Real job costing — labor, materials, truck, overhead — tells you which work to chase and which to drop.
Open Job Costing →Growth consumes cash before it creates it — payroll, fleet, and materials go out before customers pay. A 13-week forecast keeps you ahead of the squeeze.
Open Cash Flow →Quick answers, calculators, and tools built to be acted on — not just read.
The numbers every owner should know — gross margin by job type, labor efficiency, and where the money really goes.
Fully loaded job costs — labor burden, materials, truck, and overhead — so your bids reflect real economics.
Why field services businesses run out of cash mid-growth, and the weekly rhythm that prevents it.
Billable hours, utilization, and revenue per tech — the metrics that separate profitable crews from busy ones.
How to price for profit, not just to win the job — and protect margin as costs rise.
Service agreements and maintenance plans that smooth cash flow and raise enterprise value.
True cost of ownership, repair-vs-replace, and tracking fleet cost per job.
When each finance seat is too early — and too late — for a growing field services business.
Score where your finances stand and find out whether you're ready to scale crews and locations.
Pricing models, what drives the price, and what a complete engagement should include for a trades business.
Vehicles, tools, equipment, home office, Section 179, and the deductions field services businesses most often miss.
Correct job costing includes fully loaded labor (wages plus burden), materials, truck and equipment cost, and an allocation of overhead — not just labor and parts. When bids reflect the true cost of delivering work, margins hold as the business grows.
Key metrics include gross margin by job type, technician billable-hour utilization, revenue per tech, average ticket, and cash position via a rolling forecast. These separate businesses that are profitable from those that are merely busy.
Growth ties up cash in payroll, materials, and equipment before customer payments arrive, so a profitable business can still hit a cash crunch. A 13-week cash forecast and disciplined billing rhythm prevent the mid-growth squeeze.
A bookkeeper handles the records; a controller adds accurate job costing, monthly close, and reporting; a fractional CFO adds forecasting, pricing strategy, and growth and financing decisions. The right seat depends on revenue, number of crews or locations, and complexity.
