Electrical
Profitable on paper. Out of cash by month three.
Electrical work is billed on progress, paid slowly, and part of it is held back as retainage until final completion. A model that treats revenue and cash as the same month can’t show you that.
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Cash flow model · electrical business plan · red-flag checklist
- Collected within 30 days (%)42
- Collected in 31–60 days (%)39
- Retainage held until completion (%)10
- Cash position, end of month three−$38,000
The money is earned months before it arrives.
- The master electrician’s license may be attached to a person, not the company. If that person is the seller, permits can stop at closing.
- A backlog priced eighteen months ago, with material bought at last year’s price. That’s a liability wearing an asset’s name.
- The bonding capacity in the listing is the seller’s. A surety starts over with you. Backlog you can’t bond is backlog you can’t build.
- One journeyman resigns, and in most states the apprentice ratio becomes a legal ceiling on what the crew may do.
Three moves, in this order.
1. Start with the license and the bonding. Whose name the license is in, and what a surety would write for you — not what it wrote for the seller.
2. Age the receivables and the retainage. Pull work in progress, then collection timing by stream, so revenue and cash stop being the same month.
3. Check the cash position against the loan, month by month. Debt coverage, break-even and the working-capital gap, at the crew you’d actually be paying.
You end up with a cash line, not just a revenue line.
The model bills the year, and then collects it.
Acquisition Toolkit — three files
| File | What it does |
|---|---|
Electrical Cash Flow Template .xlsx | License and crew, work mix, the project cash cycle and operating costs — then twelve months billed and collected against the loan. |
Electrical Business Plan Scaffold .docx | Sixteen numbered sections, each prompting you for what belongs in it. |
Electrical Acquisition Red-Flag Checklist Guide | Thirteen sections of what to verify yourself, starting with the license. |
Lender Package — those three, plus three more.
| File | What it does |
|---|---|
Electrical Personal Financial Statement .xlsx | What you own, what you owe, and what’s liquid — the picture of you a lender asks for. |
Electrical Lender Resume Template .docx | Seven sections. Your experience, licensing and safety record, for whoever decides on the loan. |
Electrical Loan Document Checklist Guide | Ten sections of what a lender asks for, bonding included. |
Spreadsheets open in Excel, Numbers or Sheets. Your numbers stay on your computer — nothing uploads.
No hype. No loan promises.
This won’t get you approved and it won’t tell you whether to buy. It helps you build the number yourself, early, while walking away is still free.
It can’t tell you whether the journeymen will stay, and a license or bonding question needs your attorney or your surety.
We’re not lenders, brokers, attorneys or accountants. Where a question needs one, the files say so.
More before you decide
How to value a small business Due diligence before you buy See all industries