Line 1

Gross margin by service line, not blended

Most owners at this revenue level have one number for gross margin. It covers the whole company, it moves a point or two each year, and it feels like useful information.

It usually is not, because it is an average, and averages hide the exact thing you need to see. In almost every shop I look at, one type of work is carrying the company and another is quietly bleeding it. Service calls carry the margin while new construction eats it. Small residential jobs perform while the big commercial job everyone was excited about lands at half the margin anyone assumed. Blend them together and both disappear into a single number that looks fine.

This is a job costing problem more than an accounting problem. It means labor, materials, subs, and equipment have to be coded to the work they belong to, consistently, every week. That is unglamorous and it is the single highest return change most trades businesses can make to their books.

Line 2

Your monthly break even

This is the exact revenue you need in a month to cover overhead, debt principal, and a real owner salary before you make a dollar of profit.

Two parts of that definition get skipped. Debt principal is not on your income statement, so a business can look profitable and still be short every month once the truck notes and equipment loans clear. And a real owner salary means what the role is worth, not whatever is left over. If you are pulling $60,000 out of a business where the job would cost $180,000 to replace, the company is not as profitable as it appears. It is subsidized by you.

Most owners are managing to a feeling instead of a number. The month felt busy, so it was probably good. Then the financials show up six weeks later and disagree.

Line 3

Your cash position 60 to 90 days out

Your bank balance is a snapshot of a moment that has already passed. It says nothing about the payroll run in nine days, the material buy for the job starting next month, the receivable from the general contractor who pays in 75 days, or the quarterly tax payment sitting on the calendar.

A forward cash projection takes what you already know and puts it on a timeline. Confirmed work and its billing schedule. Receivables and how each customer actually pays, not how the terms read. Payroll dates. Recurring overhead. Debt service. Known one time costs. It does not need to be complicated. A rolling 13 week view in a spreadsheet, updated every Monday, is enough for most businesses this size.

Nearly every cash crunch I have watched a business go through was visible eight to twelve weeks before it arrived. The information existed. Nobody had put it on one page.

Line 4

The fully loaded cost of your next hire

Most owners think about hiring in terms of the wage. Thirty two an hour, so roughly $66,000 a year, and the new tech should bill enough to cover that easily.

The wage is usually somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of what the person actually costs. The rest is real money that shows up somewhere else in the business:

• Payroll taxes and unemployment
• Workers comp, which in the trades is not a rounding error
• Health benefits, PTO, and holidays
• Truck, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, and software seats
• Training time, including the senior person who stops producing to train
• The ramp period before the new hire is fully productive, often 60 to 120 days
• The overhead that follows headcount, from more admin time to more supervision

Build the real number, then set it against what that person will realistically produce in their first six months at your actual gross margin. The decision usually looks different. Sometimes it says wait a quarter. Sometimes it says hire two and push harder on sales, because one hire will not move the needle enough to justify the overhead that comes with them.

Where to start

Pick one and build it this month

You do not need all four at once. Most owners already have the raw data sitting in QuickBooks and a job management system. It is rarely a data problem. It is a structure problem, and structure gets built one piece at a time.

If you are not sure where to begin, start with break even. It takes an afternoon, it needs no new systems, and it gives you a target to manage against immediately. Then build the forward cash view. Then fix job costing so margin by service line becomes something you can pull anytime rather than reconstruct once a year.

If you can rattle off all four numbers, you are running the business. If you cannot, the business is running you, and it will keep making the decisions on your behalf until you take them back.