FOR ANYONE RUNNING MULTI-WEEK PROJECTS · SOLAR · MODULAR · CIVIL · SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATIONS · COMPLEX INSTALLS · MINING TECH
Bid margin lied. Actual margin tells the truth.
The bid said 22% gross. The job closed at 11%. The labor ran over because the foreman miscounted hours. The materials ran over because steel went up between bid and PO. The sub came in 12% above quote and you absorbed it. Two change orders are sitting unsigned at the customer's office. And the warranty calls haven't started yet. This tool rebuilds the full project P&L from bid to closeout — including the pieces nobody books until they bite.
Bid vs Actual
By line
CO Capture
Signed / done
Leak Causes
Where margin died
True Margin
After warranty
THIS PROJECT
1
The bid
2
Actuals at completion
3
Change orders
4
Closeout reserves
5
Results
STAGE 1 OF 5
The bid — what you sold
Defaults are typical for a $600K commercial install / build / implementation at 22% bid gross margin.
Free text — shapes the recommendation narrative, not the math.
Total customer-paid contract price, excluding change orders. The signed-contract number.
$
From mobilization to substantial completion. Used to scale labor + escalation expectations.
Bid cost stack
All field labor in the bid — wages × hours, loaded. Excludes office.
$
Steel, panels, equipment, components — the materials line at bid pricing.
$
Quoted sub work. Electrical sub, crane sub, specialty trade. The bid often takes the lowest sub quote — actuals often come in higher because the cheap sub falls through.
$
Allocated G&A, PM time, supervision, equipment usage. Often a flat % of direct cost in the bid template.
$
What this tool actually measures. The gap between what the bid said and what closeout will say. Most operators look at the bid margin and the final invoice and assume the difference is "one of those jobs." This tool decomposes the gap into four leak categories — scope creep, labor overrun, material escalation, sub surprise — and tells you which one is the systemic problem in your bidding template.
STAGE 2 OF 5
Actuals at completion (or estimate at completion)
What the lines actually came in at — or your best honest forecast if the job is still running. Pull from job cost reports, not from gut.
Job-cost system actual. If still in progress, add to-date + estimate-to-complete. Common labor overrun: 8-22%.
$
Final invoiced material cost. Steel, panel, equipment escalation typically 3-12% from bid date.
$
Final billed sub cost including any sub change orders absorbed. Often 5-15% above bid.
$
If the project ran long, PM/supervision allocation grows. Apply your actual ratio.
$
The honest test. Pull the job-cost report. Don't estimate. Don't average. If the foreman tells you "we should hit budget on labor," ask for the burn report. The pattern across thousands of projects: the field is consistently optimistic on labor by 10-20%, and the bid team is consistently optimistic on materials by 5-8%. The two leaks compound.
STAGE 3 OF 5
Change orders — what got signed, what didn't
The single most common margin-leak category. Field does the work, never gets the paperwork signed, customer disputes the invoice. This is real money you're leaving on the table.
Customer-signed change orders that have been invoiced and collected. The clean ones.
$
Signed authorization in hand but not yet invoiced. AR risk only — should land.
$
Field did the work — extra scope, customer-direction change, condition-of-site discovery — but no signed CO. Customer can dispute. Industry typical: 30-50% of this never collects.
$
Realistic share of the unsigned-CO dollars you actually collect. Disciplined PM with good relationship: 60-75%. No paperwork discipline: 20-35%.
%
Labor + materials + subs absorbed performing change-order work — whether signed or not. This is what your COs need to cover, plus margin.
$
% of contract held by customer pending punch-list / final acceptance. Construction standard: 5-10%.
%
STAGE 4 OF 5
Closeout reserves & warranty
Margin you don't know yet. The warranty call that hasn't come yet. The punch-list rework. The reserve discipline that separates real-margin operators from optimists.
Reserved against revenue for warranty period. Solar install: 2-4%. Modular / civil: 2-3%. Software impl: 5-10% (more issues, faster resolution). Complex equipment: 3-5%.
%
Your actual warranty-claim experience on this project type. Lower = your reserve might be too high. Higher = your reserve is definitely too low.
%
Final walkthrough rework, customer-driven tweaks, documentation completion. Often $5-25K on a mid-size job. Eats margin late.
$
If project ran past contractual completion date, the LD assessment. Usually $/day or $/week. Enter total assessed.
$
Of your materials cost overrun, what share was price escalation (steel, copper, panels) vs scope creep / waste / theft. Helps the leak-attribution analysis. Default 60%.
%
Of labor overrun, what share was scope creep (customer-driven extras the field did without paperwork) vs pure productivity / estimate failure. Default 50%.
%
STAGE 5 OF 5
Results — bid vs. truth
The variance by line, the change-order capture rate, the leak attribution by cause, and the true margin after warranty reserve.
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Headline metrics
Bid vs. actual — by line
Margin waterfall — bid to true
Change-order capture
Where margin leaked — by cause
Recommendations
PAIRS WITH
CFO & Controller's Guide + Business Operators Blueprint
The CFO Guide covers WIP accounting (ASC 606 percentage-of-completion), the project-loss recognition rules, retainage tracking, and the bid-template-cost-of-capital math. The Business Operators Blueprint covers the field-side: the change-order discipline ritual (no work without paper), the foreman daily burn-report habit, the bid-template feedback loop from closeout, and the warranty-reserve adequacy test. Read the CFO & Controller's Guide →
HERE, TRY THESE. THEY MAY HELP.
Project margin discipline is one chapter of the operating system.
The full bid-to-closeout playbook lives in two practitioner guides and roughly 70 free tools. Read the guides when you have an hour. Run the tools when you have a question. No forms, no gates, no follow-up calls.
Not financial / accounting advice. Operating economics vary by industry, region, contract structure, and customer mix. Use these as decision-support frameworks, not as substitutes for your CFO, controller, or operating partner's judgment.
WANT THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND THIS TOOL?
Read more in the CFO Guide.
The tool gives you the answer. The guide gives you the argument — the case law, the worked examples, the negotiation playbook, the cross-check tables, the exception cases.
The methodology behind this calculator is in CFO Guide + Business Operators Blueprint of the reference guide.