SERVICES
Built by a contractor. Run like a CFO.
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Strider Consulting partners with contractors, entrepreneurs, and established businesses to build stronger, more scalable organizations. Sustainable growth takes more than rising revenue — it takes financial visibility, operational discipline, sound risk management, and a plan for what comes next. That combination is precisely what we deliver.
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FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP
For commercial construction contractors in the $5MM–$100MM range, we serve as fractional CFO or interim controller on a deliverable basis. Expect a disciplined monthly close, a standing weekly call with ownership, and largely asynchronous support in between — senior financial leadership without a senior salary on the books.
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Monthly close · Weekly owner call · Cash flow & forecasting · Banking & covenant compliance · Controller coverage during transitions
Foundation is a powerful platform — when it's configured by someone who has actually run a company on it. Our principal used Foundation daily as a CFO and owner: certified payroll, multi-union and multi-state payroll, automated T&M billing, AIA billing, insurance premium tracking by class code, detailed job costing, and WIP reporting. We specialize in post-implementation rescue and optimization for contractors already on the platform — making the system serve ownership, not the other way around.
Job costing & J/C module · PO/Subcontracts committed costs · User access by role · Document imaging & routing · Change order management · Year-end close
Our founder has built a library of report templates — many through Foundation's customizable DataGenie reports — that deliver rapid analysis of job performance, over/underbilling, and other critical data in a format executives can absorb in minutes. Paired with hands-on Executive Dashboard training for your key people, leadership sees the numbers that matter without having to ask for them.
Cash flow follows billing speed. We develop AIA billing templates and loader templates for Foundation's G702/G703 feature, plus estimate loaders so effective job costing begins on day one.
For time & material work, we automate the entire invoice: all-in labor rates by employee classification, by customer, or by job — with markup rules that automatically sweep Foundation's AP module for job-related material, equipment rental, and other costs and itemize them, markup included, on the customer invoice. What takes an hour by hand, and risks missing billable costs, becomes a detailed multi-page invoice generated in seconds.
Whether you use an outside provider or Foundation's built-in Payroll 4 Construction service, we configure the payroll module to job cost accurately against original budgets, generate certified payroll reporting, and track union fringes, dues, and insurance premium costs — across multiple union rates and jurisdictions. We also build custom timecard templates for painless uploads and automated recurring timecards for salaried staff.
When payroll drives your workers' compensation and general liability premiums, Foundation can track net premium rates by activity — to the penny. We evaluate whether the most cost-effective class codes are endorsed on your policy and align each job cost activity with its correct risk exposure and premium calculation.
The stakes are real: our founder recovered more than $60,000 in premiums after discovering that employees working across two class codes had all been charged under the single, more expensive one. Set up correctly, activity-based premium tracking can save tens — even hundreds — of thousands of dollars.
FOUNDATION CONSTRUCTION SOFTWARE
Our founder has worked inside private equity and family offices acquiring portfolio companies — he knows what buyers look for, and the common mistakes that quietly erode valuations. Preparing a company for its best possible outcome starts years before the transaction.
Succession is just as critical, and just as often deferred. A successful transition requires strategic planning, training and mentorship for the next generation, and a clear exit or buy-out structure — often best designed as a multi-year payout. We help you anticipate the constraints that surprise owners at the finish line, and early planning turns those sticking points into footnotes.
We review and improve — or build from scratch — employee handbooks, restrictive covenants (non-disclosure, non-compete, non-disparagement, non-solicitation), severance settlement and release agreements, and employment contracts. We also strengthen annual review documents and align each formal job description with the skills and experience the role actually requires — a simple fix that prevents real frustration on both sides of the desk.
On compensation, our philosophy is deliberate: leverage technology to raise each employee's productivity, run a leaner overall headcount, and reinvest the payroll and tax savings in the people you keep — paid at the top of the market, properly resourced, and working a reasonable week at maximum effectiveness.
Our founder built his company from scratch and had a hand in every department and operational function of the business — a rare, whole-ecosystem view of how a commercial construction company actually runs. We apply it to design workflow controls, process documentation, and system automations that reduce human error, improve reporting, and free your people to spend their time and judgment on the work that genuinely requires it.
Standard general contractor boilerplate carries significant risk for subcontractors — and sending every subcontract to counsel gets exorbitant fast. Drawing on years of developing his own subcontracts and side agreements and negotiating with GCs and first-tier subs, our founder developed a rapid scan for the key problem language, paired with practical negotiating recommendations that don't break the bank.
We also review insurance coverages and endorsements — the gap that can turn a single claim into a company-ending event — and for contractors with exceptional loss history and a low EMR, we can evaluate alternatives to standard insurance, such as Captive programs.
Our founder is of Mexican heritage and qualified his own firm for MBE status — opening access to set-aside work under diversity goals nationwide, where developers and general contractors must subcontract defined percentages of contract value to certified MBE, WBE, DBE, and SBE firms. If your firm qualifies, we'll help you pursue the right certification and put it to work reaching markets and opportunities that would otherwise stay out of reach.
PROTECTING & GROWING THE BUSINESS
Your financial statements should be management tools, not compliance paperwork — and in commercial construction, that hinges on the chart of accounts. It must carry strategic granularity, so management sees precisely where money is made and lost, yet roll up cleanly into the general headings and summaries external parties expect. We design or rebuild your chart of accounts to serve both audiences: sharp internal analysis, and the strongest possible presentation to the lenders and sureties who underwrite your growth.
Our founder, Ryan, grew his contracting company to $8MM in revenue within three years — and learned firsthand that QuickBooks, even Premier Contractor Edition, could not produce the data his bank, his surety, or his own analysis demanded. Foundation solved most of that, but its implementation team would only load cost codes he already had; no one would help him develop a system from scratch. So he built his own and refined it through experience. That experience is now our clients' advantage: we develop cost code structures that strike the critical balance — detailed enough to reveal trending profit gains and surface emerging profit fade early, without the excess granularity that buries the signal in noise.
True project visibility starts in estimating, when costs are line-itemed by cost code activity — and it holds only if actual costs land against those same codes. Done right, this measures your estimating team activity by activity: where overestimating may be costing you competitive bids, and where underbidding is quietly setting up profit fade or outright losses. Equally critical is tracking committed costs — the key to knowing the true remaining budget and producing a WIP schedule you can stand behind. We evaluate your current processes or build new ones, then add custom, dashboard-style reporting that shows at a glance whether each job is on track, slipping, or gaining profit.
Too many contractors learn a project's true profitability only after it closes — when it's too late to course-correct. Our principal is an expert in WIP schedules and works directly with owners and executives to establish accurate monthly over/underbilling analysis: the single best early-warning system for trending profitability. We also solve the opposite problem — jobs gaining profit without proactive WIP adjustments, which understates revenue and earnings until the job reaches 100%. Either way, your financials should tell the truth every month, not just at the end.
We know how underwriters read a financial package — so we build yours the way they'll evaluate it. During our analysis phase we identify the concerns and risks a lender or surety will flag, then either resolve them or prepare clear, proactive explanations that answer questions before they're asked. And well ahead of any lending or bonding event, we'll tell you which operational and financial moves will strengthen your position most, so you arrive at the table from strength.
Most companies can reconcile accounts and close the books. Far fewer employ the monthly adjustment strategies that materially improve how the financials present — entries that are simple in concept but routinely missed in practice. We analyze your close, then build the strategies and automated processes to sustain it, so the picture you show the outside world and the one you rely on internally are both accurate and always your best foot forward.
Running multiple entities? We organize or build a strategic chart of accounts across entities that rolls up into a master consolidated report — so you can evaluate the performance of the whole ecosystem and of each company on its own. Consolidation can also work in your favor with banks and sureties, particularly when assets held in affiliated entities help satisfy collateral requirements. We'll walk you through those considerations and structure the approach to meet your goals while avoiding unnecessary collateralization.