Resources

Financial Analysis

Ryan Forrestal

Buy or Lease Your Next Truck or Boat? The Real Cost of Each, With a Worked Example

Equipment financing vs leasing comes down to ownership. Financing means you borrow to buy and own the equipment, but leasing means you pay to use it. Financing builds ownership and can allow faster tax deductions, while leasing usually needs less cash up front. This is general information, not tax advice. First, this guide explains how […]

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Ryan Forrestal

How to Price Jobs for Profit: Break-Even and Margin for Service Businesses

To price jobs for profit, start with what each job costs you directly, add a share of your fixed overhead, and then add the profit you want. A price below your break-even covers the work but not the business. So this guide shows the formulas, a worked example, and a test to run on every […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Florida Sales Tax and Home Services Contractors: What Owners Get Wrong

Florida sales tax for contractors depends on the type of job. On a real property job, a contractor usually pays tax on the materials but does not charge the customer. Installing tangible personal property is different, however. There, the Florida Department of Revenue says to charge tax on the total charge. This is general information, […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Purchase Price Variance: The Manufacturing Number Owners Never Look At

Purchase price variance (PPV) is the difference between the standard price a manufacturer planned to pay for a material and the actual price it paid, multiplied by the quantity purchased. A positive result means you paid more than planned. So it is one of the earliest signals that material costs are drifting away from your […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Dealer or Direct: What Each Channel Actually Earns a Boat Builder

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. […]

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Ryan Forrestal

How to Build a Small Business Budget You’ll Actually Use Every Month

A 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 […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Preparing a Business for Sale: What Buyers Look at in Your Financials

Preparing 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 […]

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Ryan Forrestal

HVAC Profit Margin Shrinking? Four Causes and How to Fix Them

When 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 […]

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Ryan Forrestal

Job Costing for Movers: Cost Per Move, Cost Per Truck, Cost Per Crew Hour

Job 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 […]

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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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