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Selling direct can earn a boat builder more per boat, because the builder keeps the dealer margin. But direct sales also add selling, warranty, and carrying costs, and they rarely fill every build slot. So the better channel depends on what each boat nets after every cost, and on how many slots you can fill. […]
Read articleA small business budget is a month-by-month plan for revenue, costs, and cash, so you can compare it to actual results every month. Build it in five steps: first, start from last year’s real numbers; then set revenue by month, budget direct costs as a percent of revenue, add fixed overhead, and finally check the […]
Read articlePreparing a business for sale means making your financials something a stranger can trust. So buyers check three years of consistent statements, whether earnings are real and repeatable, how much cash the business needs, and how much depends on you. But we advise starting at least a year before you want to sell. So this […]
Read articleWhen an HVAC company grows revenue 30 percent and the HVAC profit margin still shrinks, the cause is almost always one of four things. Pricing didn’t keep pace with costs. Growth landed in a lower-margin service line. The shop added crews faster than the schedule could use them. Or overhead grew ahead of the revenue […]
Read articleJob costing for movers means working out what each move actually cost to run, then comparing that number to what you charged. Three inputs drive it: cost per crew hour, cost per truck hour, and materials per job. Most movers price from a market rate or a competitor’s quote. So some jobs quietly lose money […]
Read articleManufacturing 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, […]
Read articleLabor 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 […]
Read articleA fractional CFO for a moving company does three things a bookkeeper never gets to. They price jobs by what they actually cost to run. They build a cash reserve that survives the slow months. And they give the owner a weekly read on the numbers, not a surprise at tax time. Most moving and […]
Read articleAlmost 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 […]
Read articleI 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 […]
Read articleRevenue was up 34%. Net income was down 11%. It’s a classic revenue up, profit down pattern, and it almost never means what owners assume it means. The owner’s first instinct was that costs had gotten away from him. Somebody wasn’t watching closely enough, or someone had gotten sloppy while the whole team scrambled to […]
Read articleUnderstanding Small Businesses Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, employing nearly half of the American workforce and representing 43.5% of America’s GDP. According to the Small Business Administration, there are over 33 million small businesses in the United States, making up 99.9% of all US businesses. These businesses play a critical role […]
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