GC's and Construction Contractors
Fractional CFO and controller services for general and specialty contractors: WIP, job cost, AIA billing, retainage, bonding capacity and surety-ready reporting.
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Talk with us and get a clear view of what your construction finance function needs next.
A finance function built for the way construction businesses operate — WIP schedules, retention, bonding capacity, AIA billing cycles, prevailing wage. If any of that is what you're wrestling with, a conversation with us covers where the finance function is falling short and which roles would close the gap.
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Construction Finance Is Different. Your CFO Should Know That Going In.
Most CFOs understand finance. Fewer understand construction finance — and the gap between those two things is significant. Job costing, WIP schedules, retainage, bonding, percentage-of-completion accounting, and cash flow that runs weeks behind billing cycles. These aren't variations on standard accounting. They're a different discipline.
We work with general contractors and specialty contractors across commercial, residential, and civil construction. Our vetted bench of senior CFOs and Controllers has operated inside construction businesses — not just audited them. That means when we're talking about a WIP burn rate or a bonding capacity question, we're not learning the vocabulary on your dime.
The finance challenges facing a GC managing multiple subs are meaningfully different from those facing a specialty contractor waiting on the GC to pay. We understand both — and we build financial leadership around how your business works, not a generic construction template.
General Contractors
GCs Have to Run the Job and the Finances at the Same Time.
A GC's financial complexity scales with every project added to the backlog. Managing multiple jobs, multiple subs, and multiple owners simultaneously creates an accounting picture that changes faster than most reporting can keep up with.
WIP & Percentage of Completion
Your P&L doesn't tell the real story — the WIP schedule does. We build and manage the work-in-progress reporting that shows over-billings, under-billings, and where each job stands against contract value. The numbers your bonding company and bank need to see, produced on a schedule you can count on. More on why the WIP schedule is the truest report in construction finance.
Bonding Capacity & Surety Relationships
Bonding is a GC's line of credit. Protecting and growing your bonding capacity means maintaining the financial presentation your surety expects — working capital ratios, equity position, backlog management. We work with your surety agent to make sure your financials are telling the right story at the right time.
Subcontractor & Retainage Management
Managing retainage payable and receivable across multiple projects and multiple subs is one of the most common sources of cash flow surprise in a GC operation. We build the tracking and reporting that keeps retainage visible — so you know what's coming in, what's going out, and when.
Job Cost Reporting
A job that looks profitable on the surface can be bleeding money by phase. We build job cost reporting that breaks down labor, material, equipment, and overhead by project and by phase — so you know where you're making money and where the estimate missed before the job closes.
Owner Billing & Cash Flow
AIA billing cycles, conditional and unconditional lien waivers, owner-dictated payment schedules — cash flow in a GC business is complex by design. We model it forward so leadership sees what's coming before it arrives, and structures draws and payments to keep the business liquid through the cycle.
Overhead Allocation & Bid Pricing
Most GCs underprice overhead into their bids — not because they're not careful, but because overhead allocation is genuinely hard to do right across a multi-project operation. We build the overhead model that makes your bid pricing defensible and your job margins predictable.
Specialty & Subcontractors
You Get Paid When the GC Gets Paid. Your Finance Function Has to Account for That.
Specialty contractors operate with a fundamentally different cash flow structure than GCs — and that difference has real financial consequences. We build finance functions that reflect the reality of how subcontractor businesses get paid.
Cash Flow Forecasting Around GC Payment Cycles
When your receivables are tied to a GC's billing schedule and owner approvals, cash flow can be unpredictable by factors you don't control. We build rolling cash flow models that account for payment timing risk — so you're not finding out about a gap when payroll is due.
Labor Burden & Equipment Costs
For specialty contractors, labor and equipment are the margin. We build the cost models that capture true labor burden — wages, benefits, payroll taxes, workers' comp — and allocate equipment costs accurately across jobs. The difference between a profitable job and a break-even one is usually in the labor burden calculation.
Job Costing & Scope Creep
Specialty work is vulnerable to scope creep that doesn't get billed. Change orders that don't make it to an invoice, extra work absorbed into the base contract, time and material work estimated rather than tracked. We put the job costing infrastructure in place that captures what the work costs — and what it should be billing.
GC Relationship Management
Concentration risk — where one or two GC relationships represent most of your revenue — is one of the most common financial risks in a specialty contractor's business. We help ownership understand the exposure and build the financial structure to manage it, whether that means diversifying the customer base or building a cash reserve against relationship risk.
Prevailing Wage & Compliance
Public work compliance — prevailing wage tracking, certified payroll, benefit fringe calculations — adds a layer of financial complexity that most accounting systems aren't set up to handle cleanly. We build the infrastructure that keeps you compliant and captures the true cost of public work versus private work in your bidding.
Equipment Decisions & Depreciation
Buy, lease, or rent — the right answer depends on utilization rates, tax position, and cash flow timing that most specialty contractors don't have the accounting infrastructure to model. We run the analysis and make sure the equipment decision that feels right on the front end makes sense in the numbers.
What We Bring
We Staff Construction Finance at Every Level, From CFO to Accounting Support.
Our dedicated construction practice gives you the full stack of financial expertise – CFO strategy, Controller-level execution, and accounting support – from a team that works in construction every day, rather than generalists learning your industry on your dime.
CFO-Level Strategy
Bonding strategy, banking relationships, bid pricing, backlog management, growth planning. The forward-looking financial leadership that keeps a construction business growing profitably rather than just growing busy.
Controller-Level Execution
WIP schedules, job cost reports, month-end close, financial statements your surety and bank can rely on. The operational finance work that has to happen every month, done right and on time.
Accounting Support
AP, AR, payroll, lien waiver tracking, subcontractor compliance — the day-to-day work managed by people who understand construction accounting, not generalists learning on the job.
Software That Fits
Sage, Viewpoint, Foundation, Procore, QuickBooks — we work in the systems construction businesses use. No rip-and-replace required. We work with what you have and build from there.
Why Not a Construction-Only Firm
Most Contractors Aren't Only a Contractor.
A construction business rarely stops at construction. There is a real estate entity holding the yard. An equipment or distribution arm. Sometimes a technology investment on the side. A construction-only firm has to hand those entities off, or guess at them.
Dedicated Practices, Not Generalists
Vessel runs dedicated practices in construction, real estate, manufacturing and distribution, and SaaS and technology. Each one is staffed by people who know that industry's accounting, not by a generalist bench reassigned as work comes in.
One Close Across Every Entity
Same team, same monthly close, same reporting standard across every entity you own. Your surety sees one consistent picture instead of three sets of books assembled by three different firms.
What Clients Say
Clients Describe What Changed.
"I thought high-level, strategic financial insights were a 'nice to have' — but now after working with a Vessel Advisors CFO and Controller, I couldn't put a price on it. It's been excessively valuable."
Adam Beamish
President, Mark Beamish Waterproofing
"Vessel doesn't just agree with me; they provide the honest, expert guidance I need to make informed decisions. They have operated as a natural extension of our team, and the confidence I now have in our numbers is a total game-changer."
Matt Lovingier
President, JMH Engineering & Construction
"Vessel Advisors turned our financial chaos into clarity. They're the partner every growing business needs."
Chad Gniffke
Owner, BRITECITY
Construction Case Studies
The Field Was Ready. The Books Weren't.
A $6M electrical contractor with a strong pipeline and unprepared accounting. Financial infrastructure modernization enabled an $18M+ growth trajectory.
Underground Utility & CivilRevenue Tripled in Twelve Months. The Back Office Didn't.
An $8M utility contractor tripled revenue while accounting stayed manual. The bench caught the back office up with the field.
Electrical ContractorStrong in the Field. Blind in the Back Office.
A $12.5M electrical contractor with a strong reputation, a growing portfolio, and an owner doing the CFO work the business had no CFO to do.
Commercial ConstructionBuilt to $110M. The Finance Function Never Got the Memo.
A commercial contractor scaled to $110M without the finance function evolving with it. A CFO Power Team aligned operations with the growth trajectory.
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Common Questions
These Are the Questions Contractors Ask Before They Reach Out.
What does a fractional CFO engagement cost?
It depends on the scope — the state of the current accounting infrastructure, whether you need a Controller too, how many days per week each role requires, and how much clean-up work is involved up front. More on how fractional CFO cost is scoped.
Our CPA handles our construction accounting and finance. Is that enough?
A CPA handles tax and compliance — and that work matters. But a CPA isn't managing your WIP schedule, building your cash flow forecast, or working with your surety on bonding capacity. That's CFO-level work, and it requires someone inside the business, not reviewing it once a quarter.
We already have a Controller. What would a fractional CFO add?
A strong Controller handles the close, the reports, and the day-to-day accuracy of the books. A CFO takes that information and translates it into strategy — banking relationships, bonding capacity, bid pricing, growth planning, and the forward-looking financial decisions that determine whether the business grows profitably or just grows. Most construction businesses that have a Controller and no CFO are running on one of the two engines they need.
We're a subcontractor. Do you work with businesses our size?
Yes. We work with specialty contractors at various stages — from established subs looking to tighten their accounting infrastructure to growing operations preparing for larger GC relationships or public work. The right level of engagement depends on what the business needs, and we scope that through the Assessment before recommending anything.
We're thinking about selling the business in the next few years. Where do we start?
The Financial Discovery Assessment is exactly where you start. It gives you an independent picture of what your finance function looks like to a buyer — the WIP schedule, the job costing, the close process, the reporting quality — and a prioritized roadmap to address what needs to change before you're in a process. The businesses that prepare early get better outcomes. The ones that start when the LOI arrives don't have time to fix what buyers find.
Do you work in Sage / Viewpoint / Foundation / Procore?
Yes to all of those, plus QuickBooks Enterprise. We work in the platform you already use — no rip-and-replace required. If part of the engagement is upgrading or reconfiguring the platform, that's scoped as its own workstream, but we don't come in demanding a system change.
Not Sure What You Need?
When You Don't Know What You Need, the Assessment Shows You.
Some engagements start with a clear ask — you know you need a CFO, a Controller, or a full team. Others start here.
The Financial Discovery Assessment is a structured diagnostic across your systems, processes, and people. It surfaces where the finance function stands today, what's broken, and what it would take to fix — with dollarized findings and a phased roadmap.
You get a dollarized picture of what's wrong today, what we recommend and the expected impact, a phased project timeline, and a specific team recommendation right-sized for the business.
Start With the AssessmentWork With Us
Construction finance is job costing, WIP, retention, and surety — done to the standard your bank and bonding company expect.
Percentage-of-completion, over- and under-billings, retention receivable, job cost variance analysis, surety reporting. The construction-specific accounting disciplines are ones most generalist CFOs learn on the client's dime. The Controllers and CFOs we deploy come in knowing them cold — because they've run finance inside contractors before.
How can we help?
What’s going on in your business and where would you like help?
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