Fractional CFO Services for Plumbing Companies
Financial leadership for residential service, drain and sewer, and commercial plumbing companies doing $1.5M to $15M in revenue. We help you see which service lines actually make money, price from your real costs instead of the shop down the street, and turn a busy schedule into profit you get to keep.
Talk to a CFO Who Understands the Plumbing Business
We'll look at your numbers with you and show you where the money is leaking. Free, no obligation, no pitch.
Book My Free Cash Flow Call Not ready to talk? Run the free 60-second Profit Margin CheckupFree call · No sales pressure · Just an honest look at your numbers
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
None of that means you're bad at business. Plumbing can be one of the most profitable trades there is. Drain cleaning and emergency work routinely earn 55% to 75% gross margins, and service customers rarely shop three bids when the sewer is backing up. But the same company can also be running thin new construction jobs, paying commissions on the wrong number, carrying a yard full of material, and pricing off a list nobody has updated in years. A bookkeeper tells you what happened last month. What most plumbing owners are missing is someone who looks forward and tells them what to do next.
What Fractional CFO Services Look Like for a Plumbing Company
We work alongside you twice a month as your financial partner. We get your numbers right, build the tools you need to plan, and help you make the big calls on pricing, hiring, trucks, and the work you say yes to, with real numbers in front of you.
Margins by Service Line
Real gross margin for service and repair, drain and sewer, emergency calls, water heaters, repipes, and new construction. Most owners find one line carrying the company and another quietly pulling the average down.
A Price Book Built From Your Costs
Flat-rate pricing that starts from your fully loaded labor rate, truck cost, and overhead, with a proper material markup and an after-hours premium, so every call covers what it actually costs you.
Tech Pay and Commission Plans
Commission and bonus plans that reward the right work and get calculated on the right number, so your pay plan builds margin instead of eating it.
Field-to-Office Paperwork That Closes Out
A clear path from dispatch to invoice to payment, with your field software and QuickBooks in agreement, so jobs get billed on time and every customer payment lands where it should.
A Cash Forecast You Can Plan Around
A rolling 13-week forecast that covers payroll, slow-paying construction and commercial work, deposits on large jobs, truck purchases, and taxes, so you see a cash gap weeks ahead instead of on payday.
Break-Even and Growth Targets
The revenue you need to cover overhead, your own pay, and reserves, plus what it takes to hit your profit goal. It turns "should we add another truck and plumber?" into a math question.
Want to Know Which Parts of Your Plumbing Company Make Money?
We'll walk through your margins, cash flow, and pricing on a free call. Just an honest look at your numbers.
Book My Free Cash Flow CallNo sales pressure · Just an honest look at your numbers
Where Plumbing Companies Usually Leak Money
Every plumbing company is different, but the same leaks show up again and again in the plumbing, HVAC, and home service companies we work with. None of them are dramatic on their own. Together, they are often the difference between a 5% and a 15% net margin.
Commission paid on the wrong number
A plan meant to pay techs on what they sell ends up paying on the whole ticket, including parts and the base call. It feels small on one job. Across a year and a full crew, it can be one of the biggest lines on the P&L.
Tickets and payments that stay in the truck
When paperwork comes in every other week, invoices go out late, customer checks sit in the field, and nobody notices a missing payment until months later. A simple 24-hour turn-in rule usually fixes more than owners expect.
The same job priced three different ways
Without a price book built from real costs, one tech charges $100 for a clean-out and another charges $289. Customers notice, margins swing, and nobody can say what the job is supposed to earn.
Material sitting in the yard
Pipe, copper, fixtures, and truck stock that nobody counts is cash you already spent and can't see. Some companies carry six figures of material they don't know they own while they borrow to buy more.
Open invoices nobody trusts
When jobs are billed in the field software but never closed out in QuickBooks, receivables fill up with invoices that were paid, voided, or never sent. Until that's cleaned up, you can't tell what customers actually owe you.
Client Example: A Plumbing Contractor Gets Its Paperwork and Billing Under Control
This family-owned plumbing company had been around for years and ran almost entirely on word of mouth. The owner was a plumber first, not a numbers person. When a new operations lead took over the office, he found paper tickets turned in every other week, bills typed into QuickBooks by hand, no consistent pricing, and too many money tasks sitting with one person. He joined our coaching program to learn how the finances should actually run.
What we worked on
- A 24-hour paperwork rule. Techs now turn in tickets and payments within a day of the job. In the first week, it turned up about $10,000 in customer checks that had been sitting with one tech.
- Estimates built in QuickBooks. Moving estimates into templates cut out three manual steps between the quote and the invoice.
- One inbox for bills. Vendor bills now come to a single inbox and get recorded once a week instead of trickling in all month.
- Commission math fixed. Tech commissions were being calculated on the full ticket instead of the upsold portion. We showed how to set it up correctly.
- Pricing by customer type. Separate rate tiers for residential, commercial, and larger jobs, with materials billed at cost plus a set markup.
- A dispatcher instead of the owner's phone. Hiring a dedicated dispatcher became the top priority, and it got done during the program.
To be clear about what this is: it was a 12-week coaching engagement, not ongoing fractional CFO services, and the books were still being reconciled when the program ended. So we're only sharing what we could see directly. What it shows is how much a plumbing company can recover just by getting paperwork, billing, and pricing under control before anyone touches a forecast.
"I took your advice and there were immediate results."
Operations lead, Southern California plumbing contractorFractional CFO Results in Related Trades
Plumbing companies share most of their money problems with the other trades we work with: field crews, trucks, job costing, slow-paying commercial work, and owners who never got to learn finance. Here is what fractional CFO work has looked like for a few of them.
HVAC: From $2,700 to over $200,000 in the bank
A commercial HVAC contractor doing about $3.5M went from $2,700 in the bank to over $200,000 in about 90 days. See the HVAC case study
Roofing: a confirmed 36% margin and $200K in reserves
A $6M+ roofing franchise went from a P&L nobody trusted to margins tracked by line of work and $200,000 funded into reserves. See the roofing case studies
Excavation: a 34% hard-money loan paid off
A $3M excavation, sewer, and water contractor paid off a $150,000 hard-money loan and built cash to over $200,000. See the excavation case studies
Construction: cash flow for contractors
How we help general and specialty contractors with job costing, progress billing, retainage, and cash between jobs. See construction CFO services
Plumbing Profit Margin Benchmarks
Here is where plumbing companies typically land. Net margin is after overhead and a real salary for the owner.
| Metric | Average | Strong | Best in class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross profit margin | 40% to 48% | 50% to 58% | 60%+ |
| Net profit margin | 5% to 10% | 12% to 16% | 18% to 25% |
| Overhead as % of revenue | 34% to 42% | 26% to 32% | Under 26% |
| Revenue per plumber | $150K to $220K | $240K to $350K | $350K+ |
| Owner's total compensation | $60K to $100K | $110K to $180K | $180K+ |
Margins also vary a lot by type of work:
| Service type | Typical gross margin | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Drain cleaning | 60% to 75% | Low material cost, strong pricing power |
| Emergency and after-hours | 55% to 70% | Premium pricing for urgent calls |
| Service and repair | 48% to 60% | The bread and butter of most shops |
| Water heater replacement | 40% to 52% | Equipment cost compresses margin |
| Repiping and remodeling | 30% to 45% | Labor-heavy, longer timelines |
| New construction | 15% to 28% | Competitive bids, slow collections |
For the full breakdown, including what a $1.5M company looks like at 4% net versus 18% net, see our guide to plumbing company profit margins and owner salary, or run your own numbers through the free Profit Margin Checkup.
When Does a Plumbing Company Need a Fractional CFO?
Most plumbing companies start to outgrow a bookkeeper somewhere between $1.5M and $3M in revenue. That's usually when the owner has several trucks on the road, a mix of service, replacement, and construction work, and no clear picture of which part of the business is actually making money. By $5M, running the company off the bank balance gets expensive, and a full-time CFO still usually doesn't make sense until well past $15M.
A few signs it's time:
- You're profitable on paper, but cash is tight every month.
- You can't say which service line has the best margin.
- You added plumbers and trucks, and net profit went down instead of up.
- You're deciding on another truck, another plumber, a second location, or a bigger construction contract without a forecast.
- The bank or a bonding company wants financials you can't produce quickly.
What a Plumbing CFO Handles That Your Bookkeeper Can't
Service vs. Construction Mix
How much new construction you can take on before it ties up your best plumbers and your cash, and what the work you turn down is really costing you.
Maintenance Agreements
Pricing a membership program, what it's worth in recurring revenue, and how it smooths out the slow months.
After-Hours and Emergency Pricing
Setting a premium that covers what it costs to run nights and weekends, instead of charging Tuesday-afternoon rates at 2 a.m.
Hiring and Capacity
Whether your next hire should be a plumber, a dispatcher, or an office manager, and how much revenue each one needs to bring in to pay for itself.
Trucks, Equipment, and Inventory
Buy or lease the next van, when to replace the fleet, and how much truck stock and yard inventory you should actually carry.
Large and Commercial Jobs
Deposits that cover materials, progress billing, change orders, and retainage on commercial and public work, so the customer isn't using you as their bank.
What the First 90 Days Look Like
Days 1 to 30: Get the numbers right
We review your books line by line, make sure your field software and QuickBooks agree, clean up open invoices and customer payments, and split your P&L by service line so you can see what each one earns.
Days 31 to 60: Build the tools
We build your 13-week cash forecast and a simple dashboard, review your price book and commission plans against your real costs, and set up a weekly routine for bills and paperwork.
Days 61 to 90: Plan forward
We set your break-even and profit targets, map out the next hire or truck, and start twice-monthly meetings to review budget versus actual and decide what to do next.
Plumbing Companies We Help
We've worked with more than 100 construction and home service companies, and over 315 businesses in all. On the plumbing side, we help:
What Trade Owners Say
"I thought I needed better marketing or a bigger team. What I needed was financial control. CEO Finance Academy taught me to think like a CFO. We cleaned up cash flow, set aside tax and reserves, and I finally sleep at night knowing payroll and growth are funded."
"Our fastest win was cleaning up AR and getting a 13-week forecast. Once we could see the weekly cash picture, collections became the priority and we stopped living paycheck to paycheck."
"Before CEO Finance Academy we were guessing; now we run the business from a forecast. We raised our bid margins, tightened cash, and turned a messy pipeline into predictable working capital. The program literally paid for itself in months."
Our team is based in Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh and works with plumbing and home service companies across the United States. Everything runs remotely through video calls, shared dashboards, and access to your accounting system, so you get the same CFO partnership wherever you are. Also see our fractional CFO services for HVAC companies.
Free Guides for Plumbing Owners
- Plumbing company profit margins and owner salary (2026)
- Job costing for contractors
- Why you can be profitable on paper and never have cash
- How to pay yourself as a business owner
- How much does a fractional CFO cost?
- Free workshops on cash flow, margins, and hiring
- More client case studies
Frequently Asked Questions
A fractional CFO gives you senior financial leadership part time. For a plumbing company that means gross margin by service line (service and repair, drain and sewer, emergency calls, water heaters, repipes, and new construction), a flat-rate price book built from your real costs, tech commission plans calculated on the right number, a 13-week cash forecast, clean books where your field software and QuickBooks agree, and help with decisions on hiring, trucks, and the work you take on. Most plumbing companies that need one are doing $1.5M to $15M in revenue.
Most plumbing companies start to outgrow a bookkeeper between $1.5M and $3M in revenue, when there are several trucks on the road, a mix of service, replacement, and construction work, and no clear picture of which part of the business makes money. Common signs are being profitable on paper but tight on cash, adding plumbers without net profit going up, and making big decisions on trucks, hires, or contracts without a forecast.
At $5 million you almost certainly need CFO-level financial leadership, but usually not a full-time CFO, which costs $200,000 to $350,000 or more a year. A fractional CFO gives a $5M plumbing company a cash forecast, margins by service line, pricing and commission reviews, and twice-monthly decision meetings for a fraction of that cost. A full-time CFO usually starts to make sense well past $15M.
Your bookkeeper records what already happened and your CPA files your taxes. A fractional CFO looks forward. We forecast your cash, find which service lines are profitable, set pricing and sales targets, and sit with you twice a month to make decisions. We also review your bookkeeper's work so the numbers you're deciding on are right.
Our fractional CFO services run $3,500 to $6,000 a month depending on complexity, such as the number of locations, trucks, and lines of work and how much cleanup the books need. There is a one-time $6,000 onboarding fee for the first 30 to 60 days, when we audit your books, build your forecast and dashboard, and do a full margin review. A full-time CFO costs $200,000 to $350,000 or more a year.
A strong plumbing company runs a 50% to 58% gross margin and a 12% to 16% net margin after overhead and a real owner salary. Best-in-class companies reach 18% to 25% net. The average company nets about 5% to 10%. Margins vary by service type: drain cleaning and emergency work run 55% to 75% gross, while new construction often runs 15% to 28%.
Most plumbing business owners take home $60,000 to $120,000 a year in total compensation, counting both salary and profit. Owners of well-run companies with strong margins, a healthy service mix, and multiple crews regularly clear $180,000 to $200,000 or more. The difference comes almost entirely from margins, not revenue size.
Yes. We work with whatever field service software you use alongside QuickBooks. One of the first things we check is whether the two agree, because jobs that never get closed out or payments that never sync leave you with receivables you can't trust and a P&L that's off.
We work with plumbing and home service companies throughout the United States. CFO calls, dashboards, and reporting all run remotely, so location doesn't limit what we can do for you.
Ready to Keep More of What Your Plumbing Company Earns?
Book a free cash flow call. We'll look at your numbers together and show you what a fractional CFO would fix first.
Book My Free Cash Flow Call Or start with the free Profit Margin CheckupFree call · No sales pressure · Just an honest look at your numbers