SOLON GAUGE by Solon CFO Partners
Review-first financial diagnostic for home-service businesses

Your crew is busier than ever. Find out whether each hour makes money.

Gauge is for owners of plumbing, HVAC, electrical and construction companies who just added a crew and found the numbers that worked on the tools don't work any more. Upload the exports from your job system and your accounting software. Gauge sorts them, maps your jobs, hours and books to one set of numbers, flags what doesn't add up, and drafts the diagnosis. A CFO reviews it before it reaches you.

Get your free Gauge Three exports, five minutes. Rough read in seconds, reviewed diagnostic within a day.

How it works

Upload

Exports from your job system (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan) and your accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero or a CSV). Payroll is optional. Five minutes.

Gauge sorts and maps

Each file is checked the moment it lands. You see what it found, and a rough read on your crew hour before anything leaves your browser.

Flags and draft

Gauge finds the gaps: work done but not billed, materials tied to no job, miscoded payments, jobs running long.

CFO review

A Solon CFO reads the draft, adds the questions only a person can ask, and sends your diagnostic within a day.

Messy books? That's normal. Gauge tells you exactly what to fix, and we can do it for you.

Upload your exports

Nothing is sent until you press the button at the bottom. The rough read is computed on your computer from the Jobber files only.

Your files

Tell Gauge what you run, then drop each export on its row or click to choose.
Job system exports
Accounting exports
Needs the three required Jobber files and your email.

Rough read

From the job-system files only. Materials, overhead and payroll come in the reviewed diagnostic.
Drop the jobs, invoices and timesheets exports to see your crew hour.

Who it's for

Any business that sells crew time and buys materials. The trade changes the vocabulary, not the arithmetic.

Plumbing

A renovation plumber with a new crew

One owner who used to be the labour, now four on the tools and the owner quoting and managing. Revenue nearly doubled, the loss tripled. Gauge shows what each crew hour earns against what it costs, which builder accounts carry the margin, and how much finished work is sitting unbilled on open jobs.

The pattern Gauge was built on. Numbers on the page above are from a Calgary plumbing company's own exports, shared with permission.
HVAC

A three-truck heating and cooling company

Furnace and air-conditioner replacements in spring and fall, service calls in between, equipment bought per job from two suppliers. Gauge separates install hours from service hours, shows the equipment cost ratio per job, and reads the seasonal swing so a slow February is planned for rather than discovered. The flags are the same: installs priced below the crew-hour target, change-outs billed late, supplier invoices tied to no job.

Illustrative. Electrical and construction read the same way: panel upgrades and rough-ins are installs, troubleshooting calls are service.

What it costs

The draft is free. The review is what makes it trustworthy. The judgment, month after month, is what you can keep.

Gauge
Free
  • Rough read in seconds
  • CFO-reviewed diagnostic within a day
  • What each crew hour earns and costs
  • Done-but-unbilled work, by job
  • What your books can't see yet, and what to fix
Punch List
from $X one-off
  • We fix what the diagnostic flagged
  • Bank rules, untagged materials, missing payees, unposted payroll
  • Jobs tagged so margins become real, not labour-only
  • Clean set of books handed back with a short memo
Monthly
from $800 a month
  • Bookkeeping and the monthly close
  • Your own job-economics dashboard, refreshed each month
  • Open-job and billing chase
  • A CFO on Slack who knows your numbers

What to export, and where to find it

Every home-service business can produce these in a few minutes from its job system and its accounting software. If one is missing, upload what you have and say so in the notes. That's usually where the Punch List starts.

Jobber

  1. Reports › Jobs › One-off jobs. Filter: all time. Export, all columns.
  2. Reports › Invoices. All time. Export, all columns.
  3. Reports › Timesheets. Detailed view by person, job and day. All time.
  4. Reports › Quotes. All time. Export, all columns. Optional, adds the pipeline.

Recurring jobs and expenses can come later.

QuickBooks Online

  1. Reports › Profit and Loss. Accrual basis, columns by month, last 21 months. Export to Excel.
  2. Reports › Transaction Detail by Account. Same period. Export to Excel.

Accountant access for Solon is not needed for the diagnostic.

Payroll, optional

  1. Pay register by employee, every pay period in the same window. Payworks, Wagepoint, ADP, Ceridian or a spreadsheet all work.

Without it, labour cost is estimated from Jobber's labour rates and the diagnostic says so.