Cash flow and pricing help for engineering firms

For engineering and technical services firms with 10 to 50 staff. The work is good and the order book is full, yet cash is always tight. The money usually leaks around the job, not on it.

Where the money goes

Quoting and pricing

• Quotes that take days to produce and are never chased
• Day rates that haven’t kept up with salaries, materials and subcontractor costs
• Estimates that never learn from what jobs actually cost, so the same underpricing repeats

Billing and getting paid

• Invoices raised at month-end instead of when the job is signed off
• Variations and extra site days agreed on the phone and never billed
• Long projects with no deposit or stage payments, so you fund the work yourself
• Large customers who pay late because the invoice lacks a PO number or sits in an approval queue

Admin

• Timesheets and job sheets typed in two or three times
• Job profit worked out by hand in Excel, if at all
• Pricing and payment decisions that all wait for the owner

What we do about it

Insight (from £1,950, about two weeks) follows a job from enquiry to cash and ranks every leak by its £ value. Foresight then puts the top three fixes in place, typically invoicing on sign-off, stage payments on long jobs, a reminder routine and a price review, using the accounting software you already have. Oversight keeps them working with a monthly dashboard. See exactly what happens, week by week.

Why an engineer

Sohaib Basir trained as a chemical engineer and spent 18 years in engineering projects and commercial roles at Wood Group, FluidOil and Honeywell UOP. He has written estimates, delivered projects and negotiated terms, so he knows where engineering firms lose money.

• 85% lower engineering costs at FluidOil, by bringing outsourced work in-house
• 50% paid upfront on signed equipment orders at Honeywell UOP, with no bank guarantee

Common questions

Do you replace our accountant?

No. Your accountant reports what happened. We fix the processes that decide it: quoting, pricing, invoicing and chasing.

Will you come to site?

Yes. Insight includes a day on site, anywhere in West London, Surrey or the Thames Valley. Elsewhere in the UK we work by video.

Find out what your leaks are worth

A free 30-minute call with no obligation. Or try the two-minute leak calculator first.