Caldwell Custom Homes is a composite business built to demonstrate the method — the financials, the jobs and the owner are constructed, not redacted. No real client's records appear anywhere in this document, and we have not published anyone's engagement.
Everything else is exactly what a real Build Plan contains: the same eight checks, the same adversarial verification, the same refusal to count a dollar twice, and the same section telling the owner what to ignore. We publish this because nobody else in this category will show you the deliverable before you buy it.
1 · What you said
"We did more volume last year than we've ever done and I took home less than I did in 2022. I can't tell you why and that's what's keeping me up."
You were right to be up at night. Here is why.
2 · The number
$145,313 in historical differences to investigate.
How much of it is recoverable in the next twelve months depends on the records closing, the cause of the residual below, and the cost of the fix. Two components, measured on two different bases. You need to see both bases or the number means nothing.
What you are relying on
Both figures come from your own records, and both records are open. Six of the eight closed jobs closed after March 2025 — the last month your books were closed — so their actual costs are your reported numbers, not reconciled numbers. The 2025 P&L column is your bookkeeper's unclosed draft.
Neither figure imports an outside benchmark or an industry average. Both are your arithmetic on your paper. But the paper is open, and when it closes these numbers will move. Close the books and we re-run them at no charge.
Defensible band on the $130,000: $130,000 to $139,900. We headline the floor. A larger figure was calculated during the analysis and struck, because it would not have survived a hostile CPA in a room. You are getting the number that survives.
3 · What to do, in order
Ordered by dependency and deadline — not by size.
Your biggest number is third. That is deliberate: there is no lever called "margin," and $77,700 of it has no explanation in your records yet. You cannot fix what you cannot see, so seeing it comes first.
Lien deadlines are time-barred and yours may already have run. This is not the biggest item in the document — it is the only one that stops being fixable. Everything else here will still be fixable in March 2027.
It was missed on Pruitt and Lockhart — $862,000 of work standing uncovered for four months each. The process that missed it twice has not changed, so anything starting now is exposed the same way.
You named this before we opened a file — "everybody knows it's a mess, I've said I'd fix it three times." Thirty-one of your forty-seven 2025 change orders were built before anyone priced them, and every one of those billed zero. The two that were priced first billed at 22.6% — correctly. Marcus can price. Nobody asks him to before the work starts.
Worth $52,300 of the $130,000 — forty percent of it. It is not the whole problem and I will not pretend it is.
Broker: raise GL to $2M/$4M — you are contractually short on Whitfield and Deaton today — add an umbrella, and build a builders-risk trigger. One purchase cures three exposures. CPA: catch-up close from April 2025 forward. Attorney: Ray Petrey. Together, under two hours.
Not all of them. The next one. On the system you already own — no new software. This is the first brick of the ninety-day work, and doing one proves the mechanism before it becomes a project.
Budget at signature, weekly committed-cost-to-date, fifteen minutes each Friday. Hang cost entry on the draw request — the draw already has to go out or nobody gets paid, so the data gets entered because something people need depends on it. That is why this will work and the 2024 system did not.
This answers what you told us you wanted: "I'd know what a job actually made before it's finished instead of after." It is also what would finally explain the $77,700 reconciliation difference — whether that turns out to be recoverable margin, a bookkeeping error, or something else, this is how you would find out.
Six columns — job, date requested, date sent, value, won or lost, why. Ninety days of it makes every pricing question in this report answerable. The written method removes your single largest key-person risk and is what makes a second estimator hireable without recreating nine years of judgement.
Operating agreement restatement and the Petrey interest — started now with your attorney, but on his clock, not yours; nothing here waits on it. The price move and its $15,313, once the bid register exists. Owner compensation as a real line. Written sub agreements and certificates on file. Lead source captured on every inquiry. The second shelf in Section 4.
4 · The findings
M-01 · $130,000 · Margin sold and not delivered
What it is. Eight of eight jobs closed in 2025 came in under the margin they were sold at. The portfolio landed at 14.06% against a 22.0% bid basis on all eight.
How the number is built. Not against the 22% you bid — against your own Boyd remodel at 18.7% ($34,700 on $186,000), same estimator, same crews, same year, same missing system. 18.656% × $2,830,000 = $527,962 of contractable gross profit, less $397,800 actual = $130,162, rounded down.
Why not the full gap to 22%? Because you have never hit 22% in any year on record — 15.3% in 2024, 14.8% in 2025. Measuring to a target you have never achieved overclaims by roughly $95,000. That gap is not a giveback, it is your steady state, and a number built that way falls apart the first time somebody tests it.
Root cause. Cost is compared to estimate only after a job closes. There is no point in a job's life at which a variance can be seen, so there is no point at which it can be acted on. Structural — a missing mechanism, not a person failing.
You ran 18.7 percent on Boyd. Same estimator, same crews, same year. The difference is $130,000 on $2.83 million of work you have already finished.
F-C3 · $15,313 · Margin never sold
What it is. COGS took 0.4726 more points out of every revenue dollar in 2025 than in 2024, while your bid basis sat at exactly 22.0 on all eight jobs and your price has not moved in about 32 months.
Where it comes from. Your P&L, both years, both inputs from that one document. 2,444,000 / 2,884,000 = 84.7434% in 2024 against 2,761,000 / 3,240,000 = 85.2160% in 2025. A drift of 0.4726 points × $3,240,000.
Different from M-01. That is margin you sold and failed to deliver. This is margin you never sold. Costs rose; price did not follow.
What is deliberately absent. Any "what if we raised price a point" figure. You have no bid register, no measured close rate and no documented lost bid — market acceptance cannot be measured here, so it does not get a dollar attached to it. If you see that number in somebody else's proposal, ask them where it came from.
Severe risk — reported, and deliberately not in the money
These carry no dollar in the total. Risk is not revenue and I will not dress it up as revenue. But two of them can end the company, which is worse than anything above.
| Finding | What it is | Route to |
|---|---|---|
| Petrey | 30% member of record, gone since 2021. No buyout documented. Still on the 2016 agreement and the state member list. | Attorney |
| Succession | No continuity provision, no key-person insurance. You sell, run jobs and sign everything. | Attorney |
| GL limits | Carried at $1M/$2M. Whitfield and Deaton require $2M/$4M. In breach since signature. | Broker; breach to attorney |
| Builders risk | Never purchased on Pruitt or Lockhart. Both under roof 4+ months. $862,000 of work in place, uncovered. | Broker |
| Subs | Three regular subs doing the same field work as your W-2 crew. No written agreements, no certificates. $541,000 of spend. | Employment counsel + CPA |
| Receivables | $142,000 over 90 days — 65.5% of the book. No documented remedy, no contract produced. Lien deadlines time-barred. | Attorney, before day one |
| Open books | Not closed since March 2025. Seventeen months. Every 2025 figure is a draft, including two of mine. | CPA |
| No job cost | Never entered. The system you bought in 2024 holds nothing. This is the mechanism that let the margin gap run two years undetected. | Internal — recommended action plan |
| One estimator | Marcus prices 100% of the work. No backup, nothing written. A custom builder that cannot bid has no forward revenue. | Internal |
| One channel | Most of a $3.24M business originates with one uncontracted realtor. No second channel, and $0 of $402,000 in overhead funds one. | Internal |
| No thresholds | No approval level below your signature. Thirty-one change orders were built without one because waiting would have stopped the job. | Cured by 30-day item 1 |
5 · What to ignore
This is the section where the fee gets earned.
Every item below is something a consultant could bill you for.
- Do not cut overhead. $402,000 on $3,240,000 is 12.4% — inside the healthy 12–18% band. Overhead grew $32,000 while revenue grew $356,000. It is the one part of your P&L behaving correctly. Every dollar of your leak is above the gross profit line.
- Do not cut staff or chase productivity. $231,429 of revenue per employee. Marginally under healthy, nowhere near concerning. Payroll is not the leak.
- Do not spend a dollar on marketing, advertising or a website for two quarters. Your leads work. Your margin does not. Buying more volume at 14.1% delivered against 22% sold makes the hole bigger, faster.
- Do not raise price first. Your 22% basis is arithmetically sound — it covers 12.4% overhead and lands inside a 6–10% net band. It was never delivered. Raising price on an unmeasured delivery gap widens the gap it was meant to close.
- Do not buy a different PM system. The 2024 one failed for a reason a new one will not fix. Same mistake as the pricing class, with a bigger invoice.
- Do not restructure the sales mix around remodels because Boyd and Sanderson looked better. Two jobs is not a trend. Revisit at six.
- Do not re-paper the sub agreements this month. Real, and it needs doing. But it is a week of work that changes nothing about Petrey or the succession gap, and those come first.
6 · What's coming
Four transitions ahead of you.
Crossing $4M with one estimator. Marcus becomes the throughput ceiling and the single point of failure at the same time. Bids go out late or go out rough, and margin drops further. Cheap prevention now: Marcus writes down how he prices. Two hours a week for six weeks.
The books coming current. When April 2025 forward finally closes, the 2025 numbers will move, and some will move against you. People stop trusting reporting the moment it disagrees with a draft they had memorised. Cheap prevention: tell your bank and your CPA now that a catch-up close is underway and the drafts will restate. Announced restatements are routine. Discovered ones are not.
The realtor relationship changing. She retires, changes brokerages, or takes a builder partner, and your pipeline goes with her. Cheap prevention: capture lead source on every inquiry starting now. Costs nothing, and in six months you will know whether "mostly one realtor" is 60% or 90%. You cannot manage that risk until you can size it.
Your exit. You said "some days yes," and that it scares you. Whenever it happens, a buyer's diligence finds Petrey on the member list, seventeen months of open books, no job cost history, and a business where the owner signs everything. Each one is a discount. Cheap prevention: the list in Section 3 is most of the pre-sale cleanup already, done years early and at a fraction of the price.
7 · Who to call
Forgewright does not advise on legal, tax, accounting, insurance or investment matters. We identify them and route them. That boundary is not a hedge — it is the reason you can trust the parts we do answer.
We take no fee, referral commission, or consideration of any kind for these introductions. If one of these professionals offers us one, we decline it. You are the only party paying us.
Attorney — business/corporate, Tennessee. "A 30% member of record left in 2021 with no documented buyout and is still on my 2016 operating agreement and on the state member list. What does it take to clean that up, and what is my exposure while it stands? I have no succession provision and no key-person coverage. I have $142,000 in receivables over 90 days with no written non-payment remedy and I believe my lien deadlines have run — what is left to me? And two of my 2025 contracts require insurance limits I did not carry."
CPA. "My books have not been closed since March 2025. I need a catch-up close from April 2025 forward, and owner compensation set up as an actual expense line instead of whatever is left at the end. I take draws with no schedule, and I have three regular subs I need reviewed for classification."
Independent insurance broker. "Raise GL to $2,000,000 / $4,000,000 — I am contractually short today. Quote an umbrella over the GL and the $1M auto CSL. Build me a builders-risk trigger; it was missed on two jobs carrying $862,000 of work in place. And reconcile my workers comp payroll basis on class 5645 — it has never been audited against actual and I expect an assessment."