Meaningful change requires meaningful engagement. Here's exactly what that looks like.
Trades Alignment follows a structured path because surface-level consulting produces surface-level results. Every engagement starts in the same place, for the same reason: you can't fix what you can't see. Nothing here is open-ended. Every stage has a defined scope, a clear deliverable, and a natural decision point. Not every business moves through every stage — and that's by design.
Metrics Readiness Assessment
Before anything else, we need to understand where your financial visibility actually stands. This is a focused diagnostic. We review your chart of accounts, examine how jobs are being costed, evaluate your overhead allocation methodology, and interview your leadership team to understand how financial information currently flows through the business.
Everything is reviewed under NDA. At the end, you get a clear-eyed picture of where your reporting is serving you and where it's leaving you blind. No vague recommendations. No 40-page decks full of observations you already knew. It’s an honest assessment of the foundation and what it would take to build on it.
This is the entry point for all engagement.
TIMELINE: 14-30 DAYS
STAGE 1
Operational Alignment Assessment
This is where the real work happens. We go deeper rebuilding your overhead allocation methodology from scratch, implementing the 5-Pillar Profit Tool to surface true job profitability across every dimension that matters, and educating your finance, sales, and service delivery teams on how to read, interpret, and act on what the numbers are saying.
By the end of this stage, your leadership team shares a common financial language. They understand not just what the numbers are, but why they are, and what to do about them. This stage closes with a prioritized strategic roadmap: a sequenced list of improvement opportunities ranked by return on effort, so you know exactly what to work on first.
TIMELINE: 30-60 DAYS
STAGE 2
Ongoing Advisory
For businesses ready to keep building, we stay involved. Ongoing advisory engagements cover targeted improvement projects, KPI development, job costing refinement, AI opportunity studies, and organizational documentation. We coordinate with trusted specialist partners when implementation requires outside expertise and maintain strategic oversight throughout.
For select organizations with the right cultural fit and growth trajectory, we offer embedded strategic partnerships with equity participation. These offers aren't available to every client, they're reserved for businesses where the alignment runs deep.
STAGE 3
The 5-Pillar Profit Tool
The tool that shows you what your current reporting won't.
Most contractors are measuring profitability at the wrong level. Job revenue minus job costs gives you a number but it doesn't tell you whether that job actually made money once you account for the full weight of running the business.
The 5-Pillar Profit Tool is a proprietary overhead allocation engine built specifically for self-performing trade contractors. Instead of spreading overhead across jobs in a single blunt calculation, it distributes cost across five dimensions, giving you a true picture of net profitability at the job level, not just gross margin.
Revenue
job count
labor hours
material
subcontractor
The result is net profit by job, by customer, by service line, by location, by project manager, and by salesperson. Not an estimate or a guess. The numbers that tell you which work is actually building your business and which work you should learn to say no to.
What We Don't Do
A few things worth being clear about.
Trades Alignment is not a bookkeeping service, an ERP implementation firm, or a staffing solution. We don't manage your operations or run your team. Understanding what we're not is just as important as understanding what we are.
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We don't do your bookkeeping or provide accounting services
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We don't implement your ERP or manage software onboarding
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We don't manage your staff or run your day-to-day operations
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We don't offer one-off consulting calls or short-form advisory sessions
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We don't skip the assessment, it's the foundation everything else is built on
When your engagement requires implementation support, we coordinate with a network of trusted specialist partners who deliver. Our role is strategic oversight, ensuring the right work gets done in the right order by the right people.
The assessment is where every engagement begins. It's also where most businesses find their first real answer.
Watch the introductory video as it walks through how we work, what to expect, and whether Trades Alignment is the right fit for where your business is right now. When you're ready, the intake form is how you start.