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🔍 1. You’re Seeing Volume, Not Margin Patterns

It’s easy to mistake busyness for success—until you zoom in.

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The Reality:

• You track job count, not average gross margin by job type.
  
  
• Your best techs are overloaded while low performers burn hours.
  
  
• You’re winning “easy jobs” that don’t actually pay.
  
  

Fix It:

• Review your last 10 jobs: Did each hit your margin floor (e.g. 15%)?
  
  
• Reassign jobs by crew ROI, not just availability.
  
  
• Ditch loss-leader job types—even if they fill the calendar.
  
  

If you’re not sure your pricing even covers your labor load, read Is My Pricing Actually Making Money?

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🧠 2. You’ve Outgrown Gut Feel on Overhead

Overhead creep is one of the most common causes of silent margin loss.

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The Reality:

• Software, insurance, fuel, and vendor creep aren’t re-forecasted.
  
  
• Your team’s grown, but your pricing hasn’t.
  
  
• You’re guessing your break-even, not measuring it.
  
  

Fix It:

• Rebuild your overhead snapshot every quarter.
  
  
• Split overhead into producing (techs) vs. supporting (admin, sales).
  
  
• Use hourly cost-per-tech to reset your install and service pricing floors.
  
  

Field-Ready Walkthrough: Are You Calculating Overhead Correctly? (HVACR Business)

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⏱️ 3. You’re Misallocating Capacity

Your team might be working—but not on the right things.

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The Reality:

• High-output techs are bogged down with callbacks or slow jobs.
  
  
• No visibility into revenue per crew or tech.
  
  
• Jobs take longer than quoted, and nobody’s measuring why.
  
  

Fix It:

• Track revenue per tech per week—every Friday.
  
  
• Tie incentives to gross profit, not job volume.
  
  
• Flag any job that goes 15% over budgeted time.
  
  

If this sounds like a cash problem too, not just margin, read Booked Solid, So Where’s the Cash?

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📉 4. Your Dashboard Doesn’t Flag Red Zones

Most HVAC owners don’t have visibility into margin decay—until it hits the bank account.

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The Reality:

• You rely on a P&L that lags 30 days.
  
  
• Margin isn’t broken out by job, segment, or crew.
  
  
• You can’t instantly spot when profit dips 3 points.
  
  

Fix It:

• Build a scoreboard that flags margin trends weekly.
  
  
• Use red/yellow/green status on each job based on target margin.
  
  
• Watch margin-per-tech and overhead as % of revenue—not just totals.
  
  

For a full scoreboard setup and metric plan, read What Numbers Should I Be Watching?

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💥 Final Takeaway:

Profit loss doesn’t happen all at once. It sneaks in when volume hides inefficiency and growth masks cost. You don’t need to do more work—you need to see what work is no longer paying. Stop the margin slide with clear metrics, better crew allocation, and updated pricing tied to reality.

📥 Grab the HVAC Financial Scorecard to get control now.

[CTA: Get the Financial Scoreboard]

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