Practical explanations

Contractor Business Guides

Clear explanations that support better use of Contractor Money Tools calculators.

Learn what counts as billable time, how to measure billable utilization, and why realistic billable capacity matters.

Learn how to apply an already-calculated productive-hour labor cost in estimates, bids, change orders, and job-cost reviews.

Plan for recruiting, onboarding, setup, training, and ramp-up costs when bringing a new employee into the business.

Choose between labor hours, labor dollars, direct costs, and revenue, then apply the selected recovery rate to jobs.

Diagnose job-cost variances, identify labor, material, revenue, and overhead causes, and correct the relevant inputs in future estimates.

Published guides