Specialized Commercial Trades

Find the profit your commercial trades business is leaking.

In the trades, margin slips through a price book that hasn't kept up, service agreements that aren't offered, truck stock that walks away, and callbacks that should have been first-time fixes. The diagnostic shows where your shop is losing the most.

Start the free diagnostic About 12 minutes (or a 4-minute Quick Check) · Results right away · Free

Built for HVAC, plumbing, electrical and other commercial trade contractors

The four leaks we see most in specialized commercial trades

The commercial trades diagnostic adds these industry questions to the core assessment, prices each one against your numbers, and ranks them by what they're worth to fix.

Pricing & Margin

Flat-rate / pricebook gaps

We ask: Do technicians price from a current flat-rate pricebook?

A first fix: Update the flat-rate pricebook with current labor and parts costs.

Sales & Lead Flow

Service agreement attachment

We ask: What share of customers are on a recurring maintenance agreement?

A first fix: Offer a maintenance agreement on every completed service call.

Purchasing & Supply

Truck stock leakage

We ask: Is truck inventory reconciled to jobs?

A first fix: Reconcile truck stock to job usage weekly.

Labor & Productivity

First-time fix rate

We ask: How often is the job finished on the first visit?

A first fix: Track first-time-fix rate by technician.

Finance + operations

Two sides of the same problem.

Trade contractors win on the job and lose on the paperwork: pricing, billing and collections. Blue Water works on both sides: a fractional CFO who keeps your numbers honest, and an operations team that fixes what those numbers reveal.

Finance · Fractional CFO

What your CFO watches in commercial trades

Job and service profitabilityMargin by job, service line and technician, not just for the year.
Billing and collectionsInvoices out the day the work is done, and how long customers take to pay.
Truck, equipment and payroll costsWhat each truck and crew costs per billable hour, and where overtime goes.

Operations · Friction & systems

What operations fixes

The four leaks above are where the numbers usually point. Once the monthly review shows which one is costing you most, we fix it at the source: a clear procedure your team follows, a cleaner workflow, and the software you already use connected so nothing gets re-keyed or lost.

Then we track the result in your next month's numbers, so you can see what the fix was worth.

How the two sides work together

The diagnostic scores both sides. You'll see your financial control and operations scores, and which to fix first.

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Plus the six areas every business is scored on

Every diagnostic scores the same six areas, so you can see where commercial trades problems sit next to everyday ones.

Cash Flow & CollectionsHow fast you bill and collect, and how much cash is tied up waiting.
Pricing & MarginWhether your prices and job costs keep up with what the work really takes.
Labor & ProductivityOvertime, idle time and the hours that never turn into revenue.
Purchasing & SupplyWhat you buy, what you waste and what walks out the door.
Sales & Lead FlowHow many inquiries turn into paying work, and how many slip away.
Financial ControlWhether your books are current, reconciled and actually used to run the business.

The commercial trades benchmarks we compare you to

If you leave a figure blank, the diagnostic estimates it from these typical values for specialized commercial trades. Your results show which numbers came from you and which are estimates. In a paid audit, we replace every estimate with your real books.

Gross margin: 35%
Payroll share of revenue: 35%
Materials / supplies share: 25%
Days to get paid (target): 30

Planning assumptions used by our model, not guarantees. See the earnings disclaimer.

Free Friction Diagnostic

Start your commercial trades diagnostic

Separate scores for financial control and operations
Your estimated annual profit leak, area by area
A recommended next step (finance, operations or both) based on your answers
A 30-day action plan you can start on today

Your answers go only to Blue Water. We never sell them.

Friction Diagnostic