Plumbing Fractional CFO Services
Most plumbing companies run at 8–15% net margins. Yours should be at 20%+.
We’ve sat on the buy side of home services M&A. We know drain work vs. repipe economics, crew-level labor costs, material margins, and commercial receivables. We don’t just read your P&L — we know which numbers are wrong and exactly where your margin is leaking.
Measurable margin improvement in 90 days | 200+ acquisitions reviewed | ServiceTitan + QBO specialists
Where plumbing companies lose margin
You don’t know which service lines actually make money
Drain cleaning, water heater installs, repipes, new construction — each has different margins, labor models, and equipment costs. Without service-line P&Ls, you’re chasing revenue in categories that might be destroying your overall margin.
Revenue grows but profit doesn’t
You’re adding trucks and plumbers, but overhead is growing faster than gross margin. Every new hire has a breakeven point nobody calculates. We’ve seen plumbing companies add $3M in revenue over two years and take home less than when they started.
Materials and receivables eat your cash
Plumbing has significant inventory costs, plus commercial jobs with 30–60 day payment terms. A big commercial win can actually create a cash crunch. Without proper cash flow forecasting tied to your job pipeline, you’re managing cash by checking the bank balance.
Pricing hasn’t kept up with costs
Material prices, labor costs, and fuel have all gone up — but your flat-rate pricing hasn’t been rebuilt to match. You’re completing more jobs at thinner margins. Nobody is connecting your actual job cost data to your pricebook.
A CFO focused on your plumbing profitability — not just your books
Profitability Diagnostic
Most plumbing companies find 5–10+ points of margin improvement in the first 90 days. We map your margins by service line, crew, and job type — drain work vs. repipes vs. water heaters vs. new construction — then show you exactly where the gaps are and what closing them is worth in dollars.
Monthly Financial Review
Know exactly what changed in your margins last month — and what to do about it this month. A structured monthly meeting walking through your P&L by service line and crew, tracking variance against benchmarks, and identifying the specific actions that move your bottom line.
KPI Dashboard
The numbers that actually drive your plumbing bottom line — connected to your financials for the first time. Revenue per tech, average ticket by service type, close rates, cost per lead, and gross margin by department, all tied to financial outcomes. Updated monthly.
Cash Flow Forecasting
Know exactly when cash gets tight before it happens — not after. Rolling 13-week projections accounting for materials purchasing, commercial receivables, seasonal demand, and equipment investments, so you make growth decisions with confidence instead of checking the bank balance.
Compensation & Incentive Design
Comp that drives revenue AND margin — not top-line growth that destroys profitability. We model plumber pay plans, commission structures, and performance bonuses against your actual margins so you attract and retain top plumbers without giving away your profit.
Exit & PE Readiness
Every dollar of margin improvement is worth 4–7x at exit. A $10M plumbing company at 10% margins might sell for $3–4M. At 20% margins, that same company is worth $8–14M. We build your books to PE standards — adjusted EBITDA, quality of earnings prep, add-back documentation — whether you sell next year or in ten.
If you’re leaving $500K/year on the table, that’s $42K slipping away every month you wait. Let’s find the 5–10 points of improvement hiding in your numbers.
The expertise to know what’s wrong. The tools to fix it.
We know your trade — financially and operationally
We work exclusively with HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing companies. We don’t just understand your chart of accounts — we understand your operations. Tech comp structures, seasonal demand patterns, job costing gaps, crew economics, pricebook optimization. That operational depth is why we can find margin that generic CFOs miss.
200+ home services financials reviewed — we know what good looks like
Our team has reviewed financials on 200+ home services acquisitions on the buy side — including experience at firms like Apex Service Partners. We’ve seen what 20%+ margins look like across every trade and revenue level. We know exactly which levers produce results — and which ones are noise.
Diagnostic tools that connect operations to dollars
We bridge the gap between your field service platform and your financials. ServiceTitan data, QuickBooks reporting, department-level P&Ls, crew-level profitability — we build the infrastructure to see where money is being made and where it’s leaking. Then we help you fix it.
The numbers we hold your plumbing company to
Gross margin: 50–55% blended
Well-run plumbing shops blend 50–55% gross margin — lighter on materials than HVAC, so labor discipline is the whole game. Service, drain, and project work each carry their own margin, and if you only see one number you can’t tell which line is carrying the others.
Net margin: 20% is the target
Most plumbing companies run 5–12%. Revenue usually isn’t the problem — operating overhead drifting above the 20% band where it belongs is.
Marketing: 5–15% of revenue
Including organic. Roughly 7–9% in maintenance mode, 9–12% for growth, 12–15% when you’re scaling hard or turning around. In a market where PE-backed competitors bid up every lead, spending to hold price beats discounting to close.
Profitable growth
There’s a right amount of overhead for every level of revenue. Plumbing is a little less seasonal than the other trades, which makes scaling the next challenge after profit optimization — and the point where most shops quietly give their margin back. We benchmark your costs at each stage so you stay profitable as you grow.
Want the math behind each number? Read our plumbing profit margin benchmarks.
Every point of margin is worth 5–10× at exit
The overhead math
Cutting $200K of overhead the business doesn’t need is worth $1–2M at a 5–10× multiple. Most companies find at least a few points hiding in leases, insurance, software, and roles that outlived their purpose.
Gross profit is the lever
Most plumbing companies run 5–12% net, and almost every time it traces back to a combination of gross profit and overhead. We work the GP side hard: pricing built from fully loaded labor, compensation models that pay for performance, and enough marketing to hold price instead of discounting to close — so gross profit lands as high as the trade allows before overhead is even on the table.
A revenue mix a buyer can underwrite
Residential versus commercial, new construction versus service, maintenance versus one-off — buyers care about the quality of your revenue, and each line carries its own margin profile and its own predictability. We report them separately so your trailing-twelve-month earnings survive normalization instead of getting adjusted away.
Add-backs a buyer will actually accept
Owner compensation, one-time legal costs, the personal truck on the company card — legitimate adjustments only count if they’re documented as they happen. We tag them month by month, so your adjusted EBITDA is a schedule a diligence team can verify, not a story reconstructed from memory two weeks before close.
If a sale is anywhere on your horizon, the time to build the margin is now — before a buyer prices it for you.
Book a Free Financial Diagnostic →
Real ResultsWe’ve taken plumbing clients from mid-single-digit net margins to the high teens — and carried one through to an exit to a PE-backed platform at a top-decile multiple for its size. Read the Hosack case study →
Frequently asked questions
Find out where your plumbing margins are hiding
Most plumbing companies have 5–10+ points of margin improvement waiting to be found. That’s real money — on your bottom line today and worth multiples when you sell.