Case Study
How a $20M mechanical contractor surfaced $1.3M+ in trapped crew margin and cash in 48 hours
Strong revenue, full backlog, a busy crew — and still tight on cash. The best techs were buried in low-margin work, and the jobs they finished took weeks to turn into money. Nobody had connected the field to the books. Level made that operating layer visible: where every crew hour was earning, and where finished work was stuck before it became cash.
$1.3M+
In trapped crew margin and cash, surfaced
~$300K
Margin lost to senior techs on low-margin work
100+
Completed jobs not yet turned into cash
48 hrs
From connection to full findings report
The Challenge
$20M in revenue. A busy crew. And no idea where the hours and cash were leaking.
The best techs were on the lowest-margin work
Senior, hard-to-replace technicians were getting routed to high-volume jobs that barely cleared cost — while the work that actually paid sat in the queue. Nobody could see it, because hours lived in the field system and margin lived in the books.
No view of gross profit per tech hour
The team knew revenue and they knew payroll, but no one could answer the only question that scales a labor business: which crews and job types produce the most margin per hour of skilled labor?
Finished jobs took weeks to become cash
Completed work with logged labor hours but no invoice generated — gaps in the handoff between field operations and the back office meant the cash cycle started late on job after job.
Cash sitting in AR and lapsing agreements
$200K+ aging past 120 days with no follow-up cadence, plus recurring service agreements lapsing silently — the back half of the cash cycle was leaking just as quietly as the front.
What We Did
Connect the field to the books, then follow the hours and the cash
Four systems connected in under an hour. We tracked two things end to end: gross profit per technician hour, and how long completed work took to turn into cash. Full findings in 48 hours, no new software to learn.
Connected to four systems in under an hour
Read-only connections to their field service platform, QuickBooks, service agreement system, and estimating tool. No IT department needed, no credentials shared — just standard API integrations.
Mapped gross profit per tech hour by job type
We joined labor hours from the field to job costs and revenue, then ranked every job type by gross profit per technician hour. The pattern was immediate: the highest-volume work carried the lowest margin and was eating the most senior crew time.
Traced the cash cycle from completed job to deposit
The same connections exposed where finished work stalled before becoming cash — completed jobs with logged hours but no invoice, aging AR with no follow-up cadence, and service agreements lapsing with no renewal outreach.
Validated the numbers and delivered a ranked action plan
Our controllers confirmed each finding against source records and delivered a prioritized plan within 48 hours: which crews to re-route, which job types to reprice, and which completed work to bill and collect first.
Results
What we found
$1.3M+
in trapped crew margin and cash, in two buckets
About $300K in margin leaking from senior techs on low-margin job types (gross profit per tech hour), plus roughly $1.0M in completed work stuck before cash — aging AR, unbilled jobs, and cold quotes.
↑ GP/hr
more margin from the same crew, by re-routing and repricing
Once gross profit per technician hour was visible by job type, the team moved senior crews onto higher-margin work, repriced the thinnest high-volume job type, and renegotiated scope on its largest but thinnest account — more margin with the exact same headcount.
100+
completed jobs turned into invoices in the first week
Finished work with logged hours but no billing action. Flagging and sending them shortened the cash cycle immediately — work the crew had already done, finally moving toward the bank.
$200K+
in aging AR and 15+ lapsing agreements put on a cadence
Invoices past 120 days were prioritized by collectibility, and 15+ service agreements expiring within 90 days were flagged. Automated 90/60/30-day triggers now keep the back half of the cash cycle from leaking.
We were slammed and still tight on cash, so we figured we needed more techs. Turns out our best guys were buried in our worst-margin work, and a million dollars of finished jobs hadn’t turned into cash yet. We didn’t need more people — we needed to see where the hours and the money were actually going.
Operations Director
$20M Specialty Mechanical Contractor
What the Data Showed
Three patterns behind the $1.3M
The most senior crews were on the lowest-margin job types
Ranked by gross profit per technician hour, the highest-volume work was the least profitable — and it was consuming the most senior crew time. The constraint was never the number of techs; it was how the scarce, skilled hours were being spent. Once that was visible at the job-type level, re-routing crews and repricing the thinnest work lifted margin with zero new headcount.
Finished work took weeks to convert to cash
The cash cycle started late and ended late: completed jobs with logged hours but no invoice, then invoices aging past 120 days with no follow-up. Roughly $1.0M of work the crew had already finished was sitting somewhere between the field and the bank. Tightening the handoff and the follow-up cadence pulled that cash forward by weeks.
Recurring revenue was lapsing with no renewal cadence
15+ service agreements were expiring within 90 days with no renewal outreach scheduled — the most predictable cash in the business, leaking silently. A monthly renewal pipeline with 90/60/30-day reminders now ensures nothing lapses without a conversation.
Simple pricing
Three tiers, one ladder.
From $99/mo
Simple Audit
Clean data plus a monthly read on margin per hour and trapped cash. Same flat rate for catch-up.
From $1,500/mo
Scale
The full operating layer — AI agents, weekly actions, and benchmarks to grow margin per hour.
Custom
Platform / Multi-Office
Multi-branch benchmarking and scorecards for PE-backed and multi-location groups.
What has your crew already earned that you can't see?
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