Five things worth checking on every active job. Each one is a place where a profitable bid quietly turns into a cash-strapped project, usually weeks before anyone notices on the P&L.
Extra work that gets done on a verbal "yes, go ahead" is cash you spend today against paperwork you haven't written yet. The lag between doing the work and billing for it is where change-order cash quietly disappears.
Retainage isn't lost money, but it is cash parked somewhere you can't spend it. Jobs that don't track exactly how much is being withheld, and exactly when it becomes due, tend to assume that cash is available months before it actually lands.
A draw submitted for 40% complete on a job that's really 55% done means the company is financing the gap out of its own cash, not the client's. That gap is easy to miss job by job and easy to see once it's added up across the whole book of work.
If subs and suppliers get paid Net 15 but the job bills and collects on Net 45, every job is a 30-day loan the company is making to its own client, interest-free. Multiply that by every job running at once and it's a real, ongoing cash requirement.
A material price increase or a scope add that isn't logged against the job budget the day it happens doesn't disappear. It shows up later, all at once, usually at closeout, as a surprise that was actually building for months.
This checklist catches the five most common leaks one job at a time. Seeing them across every job at once is what a monthly CFO review is built to do.