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Ryan Forrestal

Manufacturing CFO Services: What a Fractional CFO Does in a $5M–$25M Plant

Manufacturing CFO services for a $5M to $25M plant focus on three things a standard bookkeeping setup rarely gets right. Does the plant cost products accurately enough to price with confidence? Does fixed overhead actually make it into unit cost as volume changes? And does someone manage cash tied up in inventory and receivables deliberately, […]

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Ryan Forrestal

What Should Labor Cost Be as a Percentage of Revenue in Home Services?

Labor cost percentage for a home services business commonly lands somewhere in the high teens to mid-thirties percent of revenue. That wide range isn’t a mistake. It depends on whether you’re measuring direct field labor alone or a fully loaded figure. It also depends on your specific service mix. The number matters less than knowing […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Home Services Fractional CFO: The 2026 Guide

A home services fractional CFO gives HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and similar trade businesses CFO-level financial management. No full-time hire required. That means pricing discipline, labor cost control, cash flow forecasting, and monthly reporting an owner can actually use. It’s the role that answers the question every growing home services owner eventually asks: why did revenue […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Customer Deposits Are Not Revenue: The Mistake That Overstates Every Boat Builder’s P&L

Customer deposits are not revenue. They’re a liability. The boat builder still owes the customer a finished boat, or the money back, until the work is actually done. Recording a deposit as revenue the day it hits the bank is the single most common mistake we see in boat builders’ books. It’s a mistake that […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Fractional CFO for Boat Builders: WIP, Deposits and Delivery Timing

A fractional CFO for a boat builder does one thing generic bookkeeping almost never gets right. They separate what A fractional CFO for a boat builder does one thing generic bookkeeping almost never gets right. They separate what the builder has actually earned on a long, deposit-funded build from cash that’s just sitting in the […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Busy in June, Broke in January: Fixing Seasonal Cash Flow in a Moving Company

Moving companies run out of cash in the off-season because the P&L takes an annual view, but the bank account runs on a weekly one. Moving and storage businesses typically see their slowest stretch from late September through March. A year can close profitable while still including several months where payroll is a genuine question. […]

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Ryan Forrestal

The 13-Week Rolling Cash Flow Forecast: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Run It Every Week

Almost every owner I have worked with has had the same week at least once. The month closed profitable. Yet the bank balance says something different. Payroll is Friday, a quarterly insurance renewal just cleared, and the two biggest invoices are still sitting in a customer’s approval queue. Nothing is wrong with the business. Everything […]

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Ryan Forrestal

How CFOs Optimize the Business Model: Aligning the Whole Company Behind a Few Key Wins

I have sat in a lot of leadership meetings where three people had three different numbers for the same week. Not because anyone was careless. Sales pulled from the CRM, operations pulled from the field, accounting pulled from the general ledger, and all three pulled at a different hour. The meeting turned into a debate […]

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