FREE REPORT · TOP BUILDER OS

The True Job Profit Report

Which of last month's jobs actually made you money — worked out in one evening, with the books you already have. By Cory Salisbury, construction bookkeeper & fractional CFO, developer of Top Builder OS. Every method here works on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in QuickBooks — no software required. One page about us at the end; that's the whole trade.

The problem in one sentence

Your P&L can say "profitable month" while one job quietly loses thousands — because a P&L averages your whole month, and averages are where bad jobs hide. The fix isn't more reports. It's asking one sharper question, per job: what did this job truly cost?

"Truly" is the hard part. Six costs routinely go missing in small-crew books. Here they are, with the math.

Leak #1 — The $28/hour tech who really costs $36.74

Wages are not what labor costs. Every hour carries burden: employer payroll taxes, workers' comp (which in the trades is enormous), unemployment insurance, and benefits. The math for a $28/hr HVAC installer in a typical class:

Component	Rate	$/hour
Base wage	—	$28.00
Employer FICA	7.65% of wages	$2.14
Workers' comp (HVAC class)	$8.50 per $100 wages	$2.38
Unemployment (FUTA/SUTA)	~0.6–1.5%	$0.22
True cost per straight-time hour		$32.74
…and each overtime hour (1.5×)	burden applies to ALL wages	$49.11

Roofing classes run $15–25+ per $100 of wages — the burden can approach half the wage again. If your job costing uses $28 for this hour, every labor-heavy job looks more profitable than it is, and your labor-light jobs are quietly subsidizing them. Do this tonight: compute your own crew's burdened rates with the table above (your WC rate is on your policy's declarations page), then re-cost last month's biggest job.

Leak #2 — Unbilled insurance depreciation

On insurance restoration work, the carrier holds back recoverable depreciation until you invoice for it after completion. The rule the veterans repeat: if you do not invoice for the depreciation, you do not get it — the carrier keeps it. On a $20,000 claim with $4,000 recoverable, skipping that invoice is a silent 20% haircut that never shows as a "loss" anywhere. It just never arrives. Do this tonight: list every completed insurance job from the last 12 months; check each one for a depreciation invoice. This is the single fastest cash recovery in this report.

Leak #3 — Personal spend hiding in job costs

The business card swipes at Costco. Was it shop supplies or groceries? If it lands in job costs or the P&L, two bad things happen: the job looks worse than it was, and your books overstate expenses (an audit magnet). The bookkeeping-correct answer: personal spend posts to owner draws (or a due-from-owner account for corporations) — never an expense, never a job cost — while still reconciling against the bank. Do this tonight: scan last month's card charges; tag anything personal; ask your bookkeeper to reclass to draws.

Leak #4 — Materials that never hit an invoice

The extra bundle grabbed on a second supply run. The service part from the truck. On flat-rate work it's margin erosion; on T&M it's pure unbilled revenue. Industry reviewers consistently flag unbilled materials as a five-figure annual leak for small shops. Do this tonight: pull last month's supplier statements and match every line to a job. Anything you can't match either belongs on a job (recost it) or on the shelf (count it).

Leak #5 — The subscription stack

Real quote from a contractor forum: "$1,300–1,500 a month with a 2-man show." A field app per-tech fee, QuickBooks, a proposal tool, a review tool, GPS per vehicle — each renewal creeping annually. That's $15,000–18,000/yr of pure overhead before the first shingle. Do this tonight: list every software charge on last month's statement, with seats. The number usually surprises the owner who "doesn't pay much for software."

Leak #6 — AR that ages while you look away

An invoice at 60 days isn't just late — statistically its collectability decays every week, and meanwhile you're floating the materials and payroll behind it. Two-party insurance checks make this brutal ("floating sometimes as much as 10s of thousands"). Do this tonight: list every open invoice with its age. Anything past 30 days gets a friendly, specific reminder tomorrow morning — the polite nudge collects far more than the angry one at 90.

The worked example — Desert Aire Mechanical

Desert Aire Mechanical is our fictional 9-person HVAC demo company (owner, office manager, estimator, 4 installers, 2 service techs). Fictional so we can show you every line without violating anyone's privacy — the math is exactly what the leaks above produce on a real change-out.

Delgado job — 3-ton AC change-out + return air	Amount
Contract (customer approved the "Better" option)	$8,535.00
Equipment package (condenser, coil, lineset)	−$4,320.00
Install labor, 20 crew-hours at burdened cost	−$700.50
True gross profit	$3,514.50  (41.2%)
Same job costed at bare wages ($600) — the flattering lie	"$3,615.00 (42.4%)"

One job, one leak, 1.6 points of phantom margin. Across a year of jobs and all six leaks, shops routinely discover five figures of profit that existed only on paper. The point of the exercise isn't despair — it's that every one of these numbers is controllable once you can see it.

The worksheet — your last three jobs, one evening

For each job: contract price, then subtract materials (from supplier statements, leak #4 checked), burdened labor (hours × your leak-#1 rate), subs, and permits. Then answer the two questions at the bottom.

	Job 1	Job 2	Job 3
Contract / collected
Materials (all of them)
Labor hours × burdened rate
Subs + permits + equipment rental
True gross profit ($ and %)

Question 1: which job's true margin surprised you most, and which leak explains the gap? Question 2: if you'd known this number the week the job closed — not months later — what would you have changed about the next bid?

That second question is the whole game. The leaks aren't a math problem; they're a timing problem. Books that answer in real time change how you bid, staff, and collect. Books that answer at tax time just tell you what already went wrong.