Stop Running a Business That Runs You

Most contractors I've talked to aren't bad at business. They just don't know what's actually going on with their money. You've got jobs on the board, revenue coming in — and payroll week still makes your stomach drop. You're not sure which work is actually worth taking and which is just keeping you busy. Take the health check below. Two minutes. No commitment, just answers

Answer these how things actually are, not how you want them to be.

It makes the conversation on the other end worth your time.

This helps us connect to the initial information entered at the start.

What you bid and what you actually keep are two different numbers. Most contractors know the first one. The second — what's left after the crew, the materials, the stuff that came up mid-job — usually tells a different story depending on the type of work.

Q1. Do you know your gross margin on each type of job you take on?

Not last month's numbers. Not a rough guess. Right now — what does your cash situation look like two or three months out? Most business owners I've talked to have never seen that number laid out in front of them. That's not a character flaw. Nobody built it for them.

Q2. Can you tell me right now what your cash position will look like 90 days from today?

You probably have a feeling about which work makes you the most money. Most contractors do. The problem is gut feelings don't account for the jobs that ran long, the materials that came in over budget, the crew time that didn't get billed right. The actual number is usually different. Sometimes very different.

Q3. Do you know which service or job type is most profitable for your business?

The day you finish a job and hand over an invoice — that's when the clock starts. Every day it sits past 30, you're covering the cost of that project out of your own pocket. You already paid your guys. You already bought the materials. You're just waiting to get made whole. Some contractors let this stretch 60, 90 days without realizing it's quietly killing their cash flow.

Q4. Are your customer invoices typically collected within 30 days of completing the work?

There's a difference between glancing at a report and knowing what it's telling you. A lot of owners look at the P&L, see some numbers, and walk away not sure what to do next. If you're not coming away from it with a clear action — it's basically just paperwork.

Q5. Do you review a profit and loss statement at least once a month?

You can be fully booked, phones ringing, revenue looks fine — and still be in real trouble if the wrong customers take their time paying. It doesn't take much. Two or three slow payers at the wrong moment and payroll gets complicated fast. Most people don't find out where that line is until they're already close to it.

Q6. If two of your biggest customers paid late next month, do you know how long your business could cover payroll without a problem?

Context matters more than most people realize. The same cash problem can mean very different things depending on where a business is and what it's already been through. This helps me stop making assumptions before we even get on a call.

Q7. How long have you been in business?

Scale changes everything. What's a manageable issue for one business is a serious problem for another. Understanding what you're working with helps me figure out what's actually relevant for your situation.

Q8. What best describes your current annual revenue?

Most contractors are carrying more than they should on their own when it comes to the financial side. Some have help in place, some don't. Either way, knowing the current setup tells me a lot about where the gaps are likely to be.

Q9. Who currently handles your financial strategy?

There's usually one thing that cuts deeper than everything else. Not the problem that sounds most serious from the outside — the one that actually shows up in the back of your mind most often.

Q10. What's your biggest financial headache right now?

Where someone wants to start isn't always where we end up — but it tells me a lot. Knowing what feels most important before I've looked at anything helps me understand what's been weighing on you.

Q11. What would you most want a Fractional CFO to help you with?

People rarely start looking into this without something pushing them there. It might be a rough stretch, it might be something someone said, or it might just be that things have been feeling off for a while. Either way, it matters.

Q12. What's pushing you to look into this now?

Some situations are straightforward — one person, one call, one decision. Others are more involved. Knowing this upfront makes sure the right people are part of the conversation before anyone commits to anything.

Q13. Are you the primary decision-maker for your business finances?

Who Am I and Why Does It Matter?

My name is Matthew Atkinson.

Before ValiArk, I spent 10 years in banking — VP level — sitting across from business owners, going through their financials, watching what worked and what didn't. I've seen a lot of P&Ls. I know pretty fast what a lender's going to think when they see your books, and I know what makes them go quiet.

What I kept seeing was contractors who worked incredibly hard and still couldn't get ahead. Not because they were bad at their trade. Because nobody was watching the numbers with them. If they knew better, they'd do better. That's why ValiArk exists.

We work with trades businesses across the country — plumbers, HVAC, electricians, roofers, GCs — doing somewhere between a million and twenty million a year. Where you're located has never been the issue.

Questions I Get All the Time

What does a Fractional CFO actually do for a trades business?

Depends on what's broken. Usually we start with cash — building a 13-week forecast so you know what's coming before payroll hits instead of just hoping. Then we go through your jobs individually. Almost every trades business I've worked with has at least one service line quietly losing money that nobody's caught yet. Get clear on that and the bigger decisions — whether to hire, whether to take a job you're on the fence about — get a lot easier to figure out.

Is this just bookkeeping?

No. Bookkeeping records what happened. I help you figure out what to do next. If your books are a mess right now we deal with that first — but that's cleanup work, not what we're really here for.

What size business is this built for?

Trades businesses in the one to twenty million annual revenue range, roughly. Doesn't have to be exact. What I'm really looking for — you've got crews, you've got consistent work coming in, and you're still scratching your head at the end of the month wondering where it all went.

How is this different from my CPA?

Your CPA is focused on last year. What you owed, what you spent, file the return, see you next April. Nothing wrong with that — that's their job. But it doesn't help you figure out if you can actually afford to hire someone next month, or whether to take that big contract you're nervous about. That's a different conversation. That's what I do.

Do I have to be in a specific location?

No. Everything is done virtually. Phone calls, video calls, shared documents — it works the same regardless of where you're based. We work with contractors across the country.

What does it cost?

There's no one-size-fits-all here. What we build together depends on where your business is and what it actually needs. We talk through it on the discovery call — no pressure, no guesswork.

Want to Know Where You Actually Stand?

Book a free discovery call. We'll go through your health check results, I'll tell you what I see — good and bad — and we'll go from there. If it doesn't make sense to work together I'll tell you that straight.