Year end approaching

Well another year is coming to a close. We are pretty well shut down for the next couple of months. We'll do a job or two if we get a good stretch of weather otherwise it will just be repair work until winter breaks. I really like the break from the constant chasing my tail trying to keep the schedule full. This time of year I always go over the numbers for the year. This was a pretty good year. Hit a new high in sales. It's interesting to go back over the course of a year and compare it to years past. Here are the numbers I find most interesting and useful. Had just over 1000 leads. We did about 550 jobs this year, @450 of them being repairs. Of the rest 80% were tearoffs, the rest new work or reroofs. Tearoffs made up 2/3 of the income, repairs @ 1/4. What always amazes me is that over 1/3 of our income comes from customers that we have worked for in the past. Cost of goods 32% Advertising .5% Insurance 14.5% Payroll 41% profit 9%

I put in about 2000 hours this year with 40 of them billable. I guess I like to keep track of things. Probably some kind of geeky numbers person. But I have found that the more numbers I have the more money I can make. I always say that my computer makes me more money than my hammer ever did.

Time to make up spreadsheets for next year. Every year is an unknown, a blank slate and it's fun to watch it evolve during the course of the year.

I am posting all of this because I would really like to hear what other companies do percentage wise, not to toot my horn. Hope it is read with that in mind and I would welcome other input here. If nothing else, now is the time to prepare the coming year.

Well it just so happens I'd love to check them out :) roofing618 at gmail.com

I tried making an excel spreadsheet to suite me last year, but it was never quite right. I've got a lot of experience in Excel, but it seemed like I was always missing something. Or it wasn't quite right.

Flatbed, Yes, my actual billable hours have been dropping every year to an all time low this year. I spend most of my time on sales, scheduling and keeping track of things. I miss being on the roof but after a bad case of heat stroke some years back I found that I could no longer tolerate the hot weather and cut back to only doing repairs while the crew took over the production part of things. The repair business got to be a full time job so I turned it over to my foreman a few years ago and since then my roof time has plummeted. I have to say that my body doesn't ache like it did 10 years ago and I don't mind that a bit. The only drawback is that I am not in the shape that I was then either. I was never crazy about paperwork and numbers in the past but I realized that to run a crew and pay a good wage and cover the taxes and insurance I had better learn what numbers I have to hit to stay afloat. The more things that I keep track of the more I learn about what I need to charge (and change). In a way I have turned the business into a game and every month I enter the numbers onto the scorecard. I recommend to anyone that keeping close tabs on your numbers is the surest way to make life easier in this business. It takes a bit of disipline but if you just spend half an hour at the end of every day entering the days info it is not hard at all. Things I enter into the system every day: 1)All phone calls/leads, date of call, how they found me, name, address, phone number and when I reponded, looked at job and quoted job. 2)What jobs were worked on, where every employee worked, a breakdown of billable hours per job. I breakdown my time between Production, Measuring/Quoting, Superintendant, Office and Drive time as best that I can. 3)Money recieved and jobs billed or to be billed. Money recieved is categorized by Service work, New construction, Reroof and Tearoffs and noted where the job came from, such as referal, past customer, Yellow pages, web site, etc. 4)I also do a job cost sheet for every job to keep track of employees time and materials. This sheet also assigns the amount of overhead this job covers based on billable hours. It all totals up at the bottom of the page to compare the original quote to the actual costs incurred. 5)Every month I breakdown the monthly income on a spreadsheet that I can compare to previous months and years to see how things are going over the course of the year.

All of this is done on Excel spreadsheets that I have made and refined over the years. It has helped a lot to have 2 sons who have a computer business and happen to share office space with me. I would be happy to share any of these spreadsheets if someone is interested. I have been tracking this type of stuff for over 10 years and it has evolved a lot over the years. It is best to start this at the beginning of a new year and there is no better time than now. I guarantee that it will help your business.

GSD, are you sure your not working for the NSA? :laugh:

Debt/credit is just another way to keep the poor man working and giving the money to the rich. With a few exceptions, a little guy trying to have a bigger business is about the same thing. The extra money that's brought in just goes to the bill collector's, employees, etc.

That's one thing the numbers do reveal. Under my previous full service roofing business, the numbers were nearly identical to GKRFG's. Now they have changed dramatically. Payroll then 41%, now 1%. Profit then 9%, now 56%. I do understand that 9% of a lot can be more than 56% of a little and that's all good. Been there and done that.

An elderly client once said to me out of nowhere: "Willie, you'll make it when everyone else is starving to death." The comment took me by surprise and I asked why do you say that? He said "Because you'll work and they won't". Of course he meant physically but to me work is work. Whether it's on the roof, at the office, estimating and selling, driving through traffic, whatever. To me it's all the same but I seem to be the most content when I get to do a mix of different things and I'm not stuck on a roof or at an office all day, every day.

I've always said that the day I need to count my pennies to see whats going on, will be the day I quit. Because then it isn't fun for me anymore. I am NOT a numbers guy. But I am an info guy. I write everything down about a job in their file jacket. I know everything I did with a customer to the tiniest detail, the work I did for them, info about their house or building, info about their personal lives etc. ...... But numbers??? not a clue.

Like I said, If I can pay myself a good wage and same wage every single week, I'm doing just fine. but its just me working, nobody else.

when I am having trouble with my payroll, that's when I start cutting overhead and trying to do things less costly.

I started getting into pretty big debt about 8 years ago, in the last 3 years I've been digging myself out of it. By the end of next year, I should be all paid up and debt free. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Its getting so bright,, everybody is sending me credit card apps, loan apps, line of credit apps. I am strictly cash nowadays !!!

JimB and I talked often before he died. both of us in the same type of boat, business and debt wise. we finally figured out that we need to change things. and the best way was to get back to doing things just like the way we did things when we started out. It worked great !!! gorilla marketing, doing the work ourselves, act as if we were just starting out again. No frivolous wasting money etc.

While most around here are going under daily, I am chugging along just fine. its even fun to go to work everyday. Mondays are looked forward to.

While I do know most of the numbers and have known them in past years, I can't really say that it's helped much of anything. I have to have what I have to have and it costs what it costs. Sure, big corporations can benefit from it by using it to see where they can cut costs and waste ( or throats ).

I didn't get a new truck but I did manage to pay off my current one along with a lot of other debt that I had accumulated. So I'm going into 2014 debt free with a New Years Resolution of staying that way!

Merry Christmas Everyone! :)

I'm like GSD about the numbers. I've got a stack here of jobs billed in 2013, each a single page and it looks like 3 3/4". How much does that make?

My wife is the bookkeeper and she tells me if it's not going up, other than that, I live a happy life, what do I care. I gotta new truck, too. Something about the depreciation thing. Thanks Obommer!

GKRFG: What do you mean by 40 hours of 2000 are billable? You mostly did overhead/management type stuff?

wow, I have no idea about my numbers.

I paid myself every week, never missed a week. I paid back half of my outstanding credit cards and loans. Bought a new truck. I enjoy what I'm doing.

that's all I'm looking for.

Had 221 leads. Did 158 jobs. 152 repairs and 6 small roofs. Closing rate was 71.5% Repairs made up the vast majority of the income.

This was my first year operating a new repair service business so most of the work came from advertising with some referrals and repeats. I did all of the work myself except for using a couple of part time casual laborers on the few small roofs.

Cost of goods: 18% Advertising: 9% Insurance 9.5% Payroll 1% Auto Fuel 5% Misc: 1.5% Gross Profit: 56%

I don't know exactly how many hours I put in, probably 1,500 or so ( 30 per week ) with a LOT of that driving from job to job and picking up materials.

Gerry what I find interesting is your materials @ 32%. For years my material ran right stable between 25-26%. Now the last 3 yrs. (not counting 2013) I've been well over 36%...... raising prices would help, I know.

My advertising is going down to around 1% also, counting BBB and other areas I am eliminating.

Definitely past customers and their referrals is what fuels my roofing machine

I'll come back to this thread with some solid #'s when I get to the office. Thanks for posting

I also look over my calendar for the past year. I can remember the meetings, events attended, etc. and helps sum up and trigger things for end of the year accounting. I think your numbers are really interesting. How can you move forward if you don't know what you did?