Looking for a fractional CFO in Fort Worth is usually a Tuesday-night thought. Owners use this work to see profit job by job. The crews are out, the invoices are going, and you could not tell a friend which job made the most money last month. Steven Palmieri, a Tax CFO, shaped this side of the practice around owners who share that blind spot.
Think of a fractional CFO as a share of a senior finance person's month. You get the experience of someone who reads a lot of job reports, a few hours at a stretch and no full salary. The point is to see your work the way a bank would, and then to decide with that picture.
The month ends with a close in which every cost sits on the job that caused it. Labor, materials, subcontractors and equipment time are tagged to their jobs, and the bank is tied out to the books the way the IRS asks every business to do monthly. A number that looks wrong gets chased down before anything is stacked on top of it.
Next comes one page of profit by job. For each job it shows what was billed, what it cost and what was left. With it comes the work-in-progress view, which says how far along each job is against how much has been billed.
Then comes the decision. A bid to reprice. A crew to move. A customer who needs a different schedule of draws. Taxes join the same conversation, since estimates and owner pay sit on the same numbers.
A once-a-year relationship cannot help much with a business that changes weekly. By the time a year-end report arrives, the jobs it describes are finished and the bids that mattered are already signed. A monthly rhythm closes that gap. You get the answer about the work you did in March while it is still March, and you bid April's work with it.
Say a remodel billed $60,000, cost $52,000 and left $8,000, and the owner had priced it expecting $15,000. This is a made-up job with round numbers. The decision it points to is simple. Either the next remodel gets priced higher, or the sources of the extra $7,000 get found. Without the monthly close, the owner would only have felt that the job was a lot of work. Which jobs make money goes deeper into how that picture is built.
Most weeks the work happens in shared books and in short written notes. Once a month we meet by video, at a time that fits around your crews and not the other way round. For some moments, such as a first look at the books or a bid review, a sit-down session may help. The page on meeting in person and on video covers how that works.
We keep the list short, because a crew lead already has a full day. A photo of each material receipt, or a note on which job it went to. A line on which crew worked where, when it changed. A heads-up when a customer changes the scope. That is usually enough, and none of it needs a new system. The books and the bank feeds do the rest, and we send back a plain question whenever something does not line up.
Whatever the jobs are doing, certain dates arrive. Sales tax returns, the franchise report, the property rendition at the appraisal district and payroll filings each have a day. They go on the same calendar as your jobs, so a tax payment never competes with a materials order by surprise.
We would rather say it here. If your surety or bonding company requires statements signed by a licensed firm, that firm does that part, and we get the books and the work-in-progress schedule ready for them. If you are in a lien or payment dispute, you need a construction attorney. Owners with no books at all start with one closed month, and we can do that together.
Bring three recent jobs and we will show you what each one left. The first call is free, with no paperwork and no payment. You can also read the answers to common questions first.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.