Gut Instinct Can’t Replace Good Reporting: Why You Need Service Line Visibility
Running a restoration company means making dozens of quick decisions every week—staffing, scheduling, client communications, vendor coordination. It’s fast-paced and often reactive. That’s why so many owners rely on gut instinct to guide strategy.
But even the best instincts can lead you astray if the data isn’t there to back them up.
The Problem: You Think You Know What’s Profitable
Most restoration owners feel like they know where they’re making money. “Mitigation’s strong,” or “Rebuild has better margins,” or “Mold is hit or miss.” But when we actually break down the numbers—by service line, over time—the results often surprise people.
Sometimes the service you thought was your cash cow is barely breaking even. Sometimes a neglected part of the business has the highest margins, but it’s not getting enough attention.
A Simple But Powerful Exercise
If you want clarity, try this:
Pull the last 3 months of jobs.
Group them by service line—Mitigation, Rebuild, Contents, Mold (or whatever categories are relevant for you).
For each service line, calculate:
Total revenue
Labor cost
Materials/subcontractor cost
Gross profit and gross margin
This doesn’t have to be overly complex. Even a basic spreadsheet can reveal which parts of your business are pulling their weight—and which aren’t.
👉 Key Questions to Ask:
Which service lines consistently perform well?
Are there outliers skewing the data?
Is any category growing faster than the others—but dragging down profit?
Are you pricing each type of work correctly?
Why This Matters: Different Work, Different Math
Each service line has a different cost structure.
Mitigation tends to be labor-heavy and fast-turnaround.
Rebuild often includes higher materials and subcontractor costs—and longer cash cycles.
Contents may be niche but highly profitable if done right.
Mold usually brings high margins, but only if properly scoped and tightly managed.
When you lump everything together in your P&L, you lose that nuance. One line might be subsidizing the poor performance of another—and you wouldn’t know it without breaking it out.
What Good Reporting Looks Like
To get clear visibility, your reports should track:
Revenue and COGS by service line
Labor burden split appropriately (don’t forget taxes, insurance, etc.)
Gross margin per category
Overhead allocations (if possible, for a more detailed view)
You don’t need to track job-level profitability on every project to get these insights. But you do need to categorize income and expenses by service type consistently. QuickBooks Online with class or location tracking can work for this. So can simple tagging systems in your CRM and accounting software—if used correctly.
What Happens When You Do This?
When you start reviewing financials by service line, you can:
Adjust pricing on underperforming work
Invest more into high-margin services
Change marketing focus to highlight more profitable jobs
Make smarter hiring and staffing decisions
Avoid burnout by doing more of the right kind of work
You start running your company with clarity, not just hustle.
Final Thought: You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Track
Gut instinct helps in the field—but in the office, it can only take you so far. If you're serious about growing a restoration business that's not just busy but profitable, you need to back up your decisions with data.
Start by breaking down your revenue and cost data by service line. The patterns will show you where your real opportunities are—and where you may be bleeding profit without realizing it.
Need help getting visibility into your numbers?
Schedule a call with us and learn how our CFO subscription reports can make your financials work for you:
👉 https://calendly.com/kiwicashflow