Fractional CFO for Fire & Life Safety Companies in Chicago
Inspections, code-required renewals, contracted service. It should be the most predictable model in the trades. We build the reporting that proves it and keeps recurring revenue recurring.
Three things most Fire & Life Safety businesses can’t answer.
Deficiencies found, not quoted.
Inspectors find problems all day. Without a tight loop back to the office, most never turn into a quote.
Contracts lose money one at a time.
Total revenue looks healthy while individual contracts quietly lose: labor priced low, renewal pricing never updated, drive time nobody counts.
Renewals live in a calendar, not a forecast.
Nobody can say what’s coming due, or what will be missed, in the next ninety days.
The office, applied to Fire & Life Safety.
What fire & life safety owners ask us
Why do we need more than QuickBooks?
QuickBooks tells you what happened company-wide. It won’t tell you which contracts are profitable, which techs close the most deficiency quotes, or which accounts are about to churn.
Can you help with audit readiness, not just financials?
Yes. That’s the Controls floor: the rules and approvals that keep your records solid enough to survive an audit.
We’re already profitable. Why would we need this?
Growth makes whatever structure you have bigger. If it’s improvised, growth makes that worse. The gap shows up at the worst time: a bad quarter, a sale, an owner transition.
How is this different from a full-time controller?
A controller costs more than most companies this size can justify and mostly processes transactions. This gets you the reporting and the financial leadership without the full-time overhead.
What if I’m thinking about selling in a few years?
Then start earlier. Buyers pay for earnings they can verify, and most of what we do is make earnings verifiable. Eighteen months out changes the number. Sixty days out just makes diligence less painful.
Every engagement starts with a Read.
If it doesn’t find more than it costs, you don’t pay for it.