Management - Finances - Remodeling Industry News and Archive Information for Remodelers

Job Costing
Labor Burden
Slippage

Job Costing

Get Real: Construction Cost Cheat Sheet for Clients
Using this cheat sheet helps establish a protocol for discussing a realistic budget with clients.
How To: Get the Best Pricing From Suppliers
Strengthen supplier and subcontractor relationships for better pricing on your remodeling jobs.
Better Estimates: Plan for Cost Increases Before Jobs Are Sold
How to anticipate cost increases and include them in project estimates before jobs are sold.
A Test for Assessing Skill Levels of Carpenter Job Candidates
Administering a jobsite skills test helps Nuss Construction weed out unsuitable candidates.
Orderly Change: Managing the Change Order Process
Collecting payment for change orders isn't difficult, as long as you have a clear process and you make clients aware of it early in the remodeling process.
Options: Providing Clients With Options for Achieving Their Remodeling Dreams
GREG ANTONIOLI: There's no one path to remodeling glory. To help close the sale, offer prospects options for their remodel, such as phasing the project.
Business How-To: Hiring an Accountant
Need expertise to handle your business's bookkeeping? Tips for hiring an accountant to wrangle your company's financial information.
Risky Business: Allow for Risks Before You Sell the Job
MELANIE HODGDON AND LESLIE SHINER: How to come up with a sale price that includes the risk calculated for the job.
Making Assumptions: Don't Let a First Impression Fool You
STEVE GRAY: Don't judge a prospect by his house — work for that client may not be at all what you expect.
At Your Service: Winning the Bid Wars
Smart clients know that quality has a price, so a competitive bid need not be unrealistically low. You can win jobs by bidding fairly, with bids that reflect the high quality of your work.

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Labor Burden

To Hire or Not to Hire?
Calculate the total cost of hiring new staff before you make your move to increase the size of your team.
Business How-To: Preparing an Operating Budget
A step-by-step guide for creating an outline budget or an itemized budget, depending on your company's size and complexity.
Flexible Pricing: Pricing Strategies in Today's Economy
Lump-sum pricing focuses on costs and can make it difficult to explain pricing to clients. In today's competitive market, consider the alternative: flexible pricing.
Exaktime PocketClock/GPS
BlackBerry-bound supervisors will appreciate the new PocketClock/GPS time clock and management tool for the smartphone.
Pricing Remodeling Jobs Just Right
Get back to good estimating and job costing to offer accurate pricing on your jobs.
Cutting Costs
By now your 2009 budget should be nearly complete — how does it look? Are you making the money you, as owner, need to make?
Business Planning Pays Off
Being "too busy to plan" and map out strategies to rework structural shortcomings within your business will see you paying the consequences for a long time to come.
Estimating a Project
Can you explain what costs should be included when estimating a project and what percent I should be using for markup? And should I mark up smaller jobs more than large jobs?
Opening the Books, Fortifying the Bottom Line
Don’t be afraid of open-book management, says one remodeler whose profits, productivity, and staff cohesiveness are stronger as a result of showing his employees the numbers – right down to his own compensation.
Finding Employees’ Hidden Costs
Industry consultant Leslie Shiner shares tips on how to add labor burden into your employees' hourly rates.

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Slippage

Time Really Is Money: Tips for Improving On-Site Productivity
Companies that have taken overhead as low as it can go but are still facing price pressure can look to improved field productivity to preserve profits.
Living History: Past Lessons Learned From Near-Bankruptcy Help During the Recession
How one remodeler's brush with bankruptcy in 2003 has helped his business weather the current economic downturn.
Small Jobs Done Efficiently
Keep in mind: Complexity, not size, is the determining factor when it comes to "small jobs."
Tripping Out: Reducing Lumberyard Runs Is a Matter of Planning
Checkout lines may be shorter, but trips to the building materials store are still time wasted and money lost.
Re-Leading the Way: The Return of the Lead Carpenter System
One of the best ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency is the lead carpenter system.
The Weekly Check: Job-Progress Meetings
Weekly job status meetings help keep jobs on time and on budget and identify problems before they get out of control.
Protect Your Company Against Construction Fraud
Construction fraud has worsened in the troubled economy. Here's what you can do to protect your company.
Pricing Remodeling Jobs Just Right
Get back to good estimating and job costing to offer accurate pricing on your jobs.
Pinpointing Slippage
By tracking the actual and budgeted costs of individual line items for each job, Creative Contracting is able to easily pinpoint slippage.
Having a complete picture of budgets projects
When John Gemmi of Gemmi Construction, in Doylestown, Pa., started sharing each project's financial information with his four lead carpenters and helping them to understand their contribution to the bottom line, the leads began to actively participate in controlling costs and decreasing slippage.

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Markup-Overhead-Profit

Benchmark Your Company Against the Big50's Numbers

This year’s Big50 posted average gross margins around 33% and net profits of roughly 9% for 2012. That’s the best showing for any Big50 group since 2006 and far above another popular standard benchmark.
Don't Compete -- Differentiate

Competing on price is not the long-term answer for winning jobs and seeing your company thrive. Shawn McCadden describes a better way.
Profit in the Modern World

Times are changing. Is your profit model keeping up with the times?
Growing in Place: Make the Most of Limited Production Hours

Rather than expand through hiring, remodeler Stan Acton uses a spreadsheet to help him get the most out of the carpenters he already has.
Bold Styling: Overhead Door Carriage House Collection

A range of architectural styles, times numerous paint and stain options, plus a variety of decorative hardware, equals a garage door design the whole neighborhood will notice.

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