Grow your roofing business without losing control of the numbers
AI can't replace your crews, and good ones are hard to find and keep. Level is the operating layer that makes scarce crew time produce more gross profit per hour: it uses approved exports or supported connections from field, labor and accounting records across storm work, insurance restoration and subcontractor costs. Your team reviews the weekly actions it flags to protect margin and investigate cash waiting in open jobs.
The Roofing Problem
Roofing is feast or famine. Few owners know their gross profit per crew hour.
Storm season floods you with work. But if you scale up crews and materials without tracking job-level margins, a hypothetical $3M of storm work can still leave little profit. Earlier anonymized Level materials describe one non-representative engagement with monthly gross margin moving from roughly 45% to negative 15%; the underlying client records are not published here. Reconcile revenue recognition, cost timing and WIP before interpreting that swing as job performance.
Insurance restoration jobs involve supplements, depreciation holdbacks, and scope disputes. The cash comes in pieces, and if you are not tracking each component, money falls through the cracks. In a fictional review, 50 open jobs past 90 days form a backlog requiring a job-by-job review of accepted billing, disputed scope and contractual release dates. Open status and age alone do not prove a revenue loss.
Subcontractor costs fluctuate with demand. Your bid from March might lose money by June if you have not updated material and labor assumptions. Earlier anonymized Level materials describe one non-representative engagement with roughly one-third of PO spend among five vendors; the private records are not published here. If a fictional basket comprising one-third of total PO spend rises 10% at unchanged volume, total PO cost rises about 3.3%, not automatically the same percentage of revenue. Calculate concentration from your own vendor ledger before treating it as a risk threshold.
Owner questions to investigate
Financial questions for roofing owners
These comments were previously attributed to community discussions, but we do not have the original post links to confirm them. We keep them as discussion starters. They are not Level client testimonials or proof of how common a problem is.
“Storm hit. Did $1.2M in 6 weeks. Hired 4 new crews. Now the storm work is done, the insurance money is trickling, and I have a $90K payroll burn with no calendar.”
r/Roofing owner, original post not confirmed
What to check: Storm season is feast-or-famine. The contractors who survive build cash reserves during peaks and crew-down deliberately during the lull. We model storm season vs. retail run-rate to size the off-season correctly.
“Insurance carrier denied half my supplements. The customer signed for ACV. I'm out $14K on a $42K job and my AR is full of these.”
r/Roofing storm chaser, original post not confirmed
What to check: Supplement tracking and depreciation recovery is its own discipline. Supplement and ACV-to-RCV tracking need an accepted-scope and receipt trace; a 10-15% unrecovered-revenue case is an illustrative sensitivity, not a roofing-wide loss estimate.
“Materials went up 22% this summer. My bids from spring are losing money. I keep telling sales to update prices and they keep selling at old rates.”
r/Roofing owner, original post not confirmed
What to check: Bid-to-completion lag is a margin killer in materials-heavy trades. We can configure an open-bid review trigger at a threshold you choose (8% material-cost movement is one example), then flag affected estimates for your team's re-quote decision.
“GAF/Owens Corning gave us premium credentials. Margins didn't change. The credential helps marketing, not pricing power.”
r/Roofing owner, original post not confirmed
What to check: Credentialing is a sales asset, not a margin asset. We measure whether premium status actually closes higher-margin work or just a bigger volume of average-margin work.
Analyzed with the CLEAR Framework
Cash · Labor · Earnings · Accounts · Risk, the five pillars we evaluate for every business.
Roofing Benchmarks and Planning Inputs
Use Level observations as cross-trade context. Other cards are planning scenarios, not measured industry percentiles. Match your business model, period and cost definition before comparing.
Gross Profit Margin
20-40%
Planning inputs to test, not measured industry percentiles: A 20-40% gross-margin sensitivity after direct job costs. Compare repairs, restoration, new construction and re-roofs on actual scope; no measured ranking by job type is established here.
Median recorded labor rate
$79/hr
Cross-trade Level median, n=1,770; P75 $116/hr and P90 $148/hr. The source field mixes billing rates, loaded costs and wages; this is not a comparable customer selling price.
Source definition and sampleCollection Rate
85.1%
Cross-trade Level median, n=464; P75 is 92.7%. Cash collected / billed revenue, with no published measurement window. A gap is not automatically recoverable cash or permanent loss.
Source definition and sampleBilling Speed
7 days
Cross-trade Level post-completion invoicer median. The broader n=733 sample, including progress billing, has a 1-day median. These are different populations, not a promised collection date.
Source definition and sampleSubcontractor Cost Ratio
30-50%
Planning inputs to test, not measured industry percentiles: Test subcontractor costs at 30-50% of matched job revenue. Define material purchases and supplied labor separately; a subcontractor share alone does not establish margin destruction.
Quote Conversion
73.9%
Cross-trade Level median, n=794 companies with at least 20 decided quotes; P75 83.2%. Won / (won + lost), excluding pending quotes. All-issued-quote conversion uses a different denominator: median 38.1%, P75 47.7%.
Source definition and sampleContent reviewed . Read the revision history.
What Level Does for Roofing
Storm Season Financial Planning
Storm work can double your revenue in a quarter, but also double your exposure. We build cash flow models that account for material pre-purchases, crew scaling costs, and actual insurance payment dates by carrier and claim (60-90 days can be modeled as a planning case).
Insurance Restoration Tracking
Supplements, ACV vs. RCV, depreciation holdbacks, O&P, we track claim components so supplements, holdbacks, disputes and receipts are visible. Carrier decisions and recoveries remain uncertain. A 10-15% unrecovered-revenue case is a planning sensitivity, not a verified roofing-wide loss estimate; reconcile accepted scope, supplements and receipts before treating a gap as collectible.
Job-Level Profitability by Type
Retail re-roofs, storm restoration, commercial flat roofs, repairs, and gutters all have different margin profiles. We separate them so you know exactly where your profit comes from.
Subcontractor Cost Management
If subcontractor prices rise 15% and subs represent half of the job's revenue, the same work costs an extra 7.5 percentage points of revenue before other changes. That reduces margin; it does not make every job unprofitable. We track sub cost trends and flag when your pricing needs to update.
Cash Flow Forecasting
Insurance payments arrive in stages. Material suppliers want payment in 30. Subs want payment in 14. We model the cash timing to identify potential gaps between receipts and payments.
Maintenance Agreement Profitability
Annual roof maintenance agreements create recurring revenue worth tracking. A fictional comparison might show expired and active agreements at roughly 1:1 by count and 2:1 by revenue per contract. That does not prove lost renewals: compare start, end and renewal records on the same cohort and distinguish completed from lapsed agreements. We track renewal timing, margin per agreement and additional work generated by agreements so you can decide which contracts to renew or reprice.
Growth & Exit Readiness
Prepare reconciled financials, supported revenue mix, renewal records and job-level cost for the actual buyer or lender. Recurring repairs and diversified revenue need margin and retention evidence; they do not guarantee a valuation premium.
Bookkeeper, your CPA, vs. Level
Comparison illustrates engagement scopes, not a survey of providers. Confirm each firm's actual services, cadence and contract; Level features depend on the agreed scope and available records.
| Capability | Bookkeeper | CPA | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record transactions | ✓ | No | ✓ |
| Tax-ready books and CPA handoff | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Job-level profitability | No | No | ✓ |
| Cash flow forecasting | No | No | ✓ |
| Compare verified benchmarks or planning scenarios | No | No | ✓ |
| Monthly strategy calls | No | No | ✓ |
| AR aging & collections tracking | No | No | ✓ |
| Crew utilization analysis | No | No | ✓ |
| Exit readiness preparation | No | No | ✓ |
| Understands roofing operations | Varies by firm | Varies by firm | ✓ |
Your bookkeeper records the past. Your CPA files taxes. Level helps your team connect work, costs and cash to the decisions ahead, using the records and review scope agreed for your engagement.
Work from the tools you already use
Accounting tools hold your books; operating tools hold jobs, sales or service records; payroll and payment tools show labor costs and money movement. We compare the relevant records to answer your financial question. These are systems to evaluate, not a promise of a native connector for every product. Access and setup vary by software, plan and permissions. We use approved connections or exports and request read-only access where supported.
Operating review
Roofing decisions the numbers should explain
The margin, cash, and operating questions we check first when reviewing your numbers.
Which proposal option did the customer accept?
Adding alternative options can count work the customer did not purchase.
Do invoices and payments cover the same work and period?
Due dates, invoice dates and bank receipts describe different events.
What remains to collect after the project is complete?
Retainage, ordinary receivables and unresolved claims need different evidence.
Simple pricing
Three tiers, one ladder.
$500+/mo
Bookkeeping
The clean data layer: monthly books, reconciliations, and organized financials AI can work with.
$1,500-$5,000/mo
Scale
The full AI operating layer: custom 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.
Book a call
Book a free 15-min Roofing audit.
We'll review your roofing records and compare supported measures with relevant references or planning inputs. No commitment.
Or have us reach out instead.
Share your details and Level will follow up to arrange your roofing financial review.
No commitment. Real numbers, not generic advice.