What does an electrical business coach charge by the hour?

ELECTRI International lists virtual coaching at $250 an hour on its own Business Coaching Network page, read October 27, 2026. Group formats price by the month instead: Jackson Advisory Group’s Peer Board starts at $895 a month with no contract, and the Electrical Association of Philadelphia offers members a business-training add-on at $200 a month. To compare an hourly coach with a monthly program, multiply the rate by the hours the written scope calls for and get that total on paper.

What does a fractional CFO cost an electrical contractor?

SPM The Construction CFO prices it by trailing revenue: $2,600 to $5,300 a month for a shop at $1 million to $3.5 million, rising to $6,100 to $14,900 at $9.5 million to $12.5 million, plus a one-time onboarding fee. Profitability Partners states $4,000 to $7,000 a month for most of its engagements. Both were read on the firms’ own pages on October 27, 2026. Kaizen CFO Services gives $2,000 to $6,000 a month as the typical range for a fractional controller at an electrical business. The work comes back every month — job costing, the WIP schedule, the cash forecast — which is why it is priced monthly.

Should an electrical contractor hire a coach or a consultant?

Hire a coach when the constraint is the owner, and a consultant when the constraint is the paper. If every panel upgrade still waits for the owner’s price and every check for the owner’s signature, coaching or a peer group works on that. If signed T&M tags, approved change orders or retainage are not turning into cash, a consultant reading the field system, the COR log and the pay apps answers it more directly. Nothing stops an owner from doing both in order: find where the money leaves first, then buy the help the findings point to.

Is the $4,500 Review worth it for a small electrical shop?

Not below about $1 million a year in revenue. The Review is built for electrical contractors at that size and up, where tags, change orders and pay apps pass through different hands and the records can put a dollar figure on each gap. A one- or two-truck shop is better served by naming one owner for one problem, which costs nothing, and the 20-minute call says so when a shop is below the line.

What records should an electrical contractor give a consultant, and what should stay in the shop?

Read-only access to the field system, the T&M tag book, the COR log, executed change orders, each pay app with its schedule of values, the lien-waiver log and the books is enough to follow a dollar from the field to the bank. Certified payroll with workers’ identifiers on it, bank passwords and anything that lets an outsider move money stay with the shop.

Answers · Electrical contractors

How Much Does an Electrical Contractor Consultant Cost? Coaching Hours, Peer Boards and CFO Months

Published prices for an electrical contractor consultant run from $200 a month for an association’s training add-on to $22,400 a month for the top tier of a fractional CFO, read on each provider’s own page on October 27, 2026: the Electrical Association of Philadelphia charges members $200 a month for business training, ELECTRI International lists virtual coaching at $250 an hour, Jackson Advisory Group starts its Peer Board at $895 a month and prices structured programs at $4,000 to $36,000, Profitability Partners puts most of its engagements at $4,000 to $7,000 a month, and SPM The Construction CFO sets its fee by trailing revenue, from $2,600 to $5,300 a month at $1 million to $3.5 million up to $9,400 to $22,400 at $15.5 million to $18.5 million. Against those, our Revenue Review is one fixed $4,500 for a reading of the shop’s own T&M tags, change orders and pay apps that takes two weeks, with no monthly fee after it. Which line an owner should pay for turns on where the money is leaving — the owner’s calendar, the books, the phone, or the paper between the field and the pay app — so this page sorts the prices by that, adds up a year of each, and covers what moves a quote, the red flags specific to electrical work, and when to hire no one.

By Tamara Stepanyan, founder of Lumina Business Advisory · Updated October 27, 2026 · Sources checked October 27, 2026 · Editorial standards

What electrical-trade providers charge, from their own price pages

Each figure below is quoted from the provider’s own page as read on October 27, 2026. Together they show the shape of what is sold to electrical contractors, not an average of it, and any of them can change after that date.

This page sticks to help sold to electrical contractors. What a general business consultant charges, and why a consultant’s wage is not the fee a shop pays, is covered in the business-consultant cost guide listed at the end of this page.

By the hour. ELECTRI International’s Business Coaching Network lists virtual coaching at $250 an hour, and its coaches begin with a review of the company’s operations before working on the owner’s chosen goals. At the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics median electrician wage of $30.38 an hour (May 2025), one coaching hour equals a little over eight hours of median electrician pay, before burden.
As an association add-on. The Electrical Association of Philadelphia sells its contractor business training to members at $200 a month on top of membership, with a six-month minimum, quarterly start dates, and weekly and monthly online sessions.
In a peer group, or a set program. Jackson Advisory Group, in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, starts Peer Board membership at $895 a month, month to month with no contract, and prices its structured coaching programs at $4,000 to $36,000 depending on length and depth.
As a one-time look at the sales side. SQUAWKS lists its Revenue Pathway Audit for electrical contractors from $2,495. It follows the path from the first search and the service call to the signed quote, and a Monthly Flight Check from $349 a month is sold only after the audit.
As a fractional controller. Kaizen CFO Services gives $2,000 to $6,000 a month as the typical range for a fractional controller engagement at an electrical business, depending on the number of divisions, active project volume and reporting complexity.
As a fractional CFO. SPM The Construction CFO, which says it serves electrical subcontractors doing $1 million to $12 million, sets a flat monthly fee by trailing twelve-month revenue: $2,600 to $5,300 for a shop at $1 million to $3.5 million and $3,800 to $8,300 at $3.5 million to $6.5 million, plus a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500 or $3,000 for those bands. Its advertised $1,900 starting price is the band for shops under $1 million. The low end of each band is its Core tier — job costing, a 13-week cash forecast and a monthly WIP — and the higher tiers add the bookkeeping, then a controller. Profitability Partners says most of its engagements for electrical companies run $4,000 to $7,000 a month, with complexity, how many locations the company runs, and whether the firm also takes on the accounting setting where in that range a shop lands.

Estimating and takeoff services, exam prep, engineering design and the onboarding a field-software vendor sells with its own product sit next to these, and none of them is business consulting. A program that prints no price is not on this list. Before signing one, get the full cost of its minimum term on paper, along with the price of leaving early.

Twelve months of each, added up

A monthly price hides its size until it is multiplied out. At the published figures above, one year comes to:

$2,400 for a year of the Electrical Association of Philadelphia training add-on, whose minimum is six months, or $1,200, plus the membership it sits on.
$6,000 for two ELECTRI coaching hours a month. The two hours are a hypothetical schedule; the shop sets its own.
$6,683 and up for the SQUAWKS audit followed by twelve months of its Flight Check.
$10,740 for a Jackson Advisory Group Peer Board seat.
$24,000 to $72,000 for a Kaizen CFO Services fractional controller.
$32,700 to $65,100 for SPM The Construction CFO at $1 million to $3.5 million in revenue, onboarding fee included.
$48,000 to $84,000 for a Profitability Partners engagement inside its stated range.

The useful comparison is not one line against another. It is a year’s total against what the problem costs the shop each month, times twelve, and only the shop’s own records can put a number on that. For a first, rough monthly number, the Revenue Leak Calculator takes a few minutes and asks for no email.

Which electrical problem each kind of help is built for

A price only means something next to the problem it is paying to solve. Match the problem first, then the format:

The owner is the bottleneck: still pricing every service upgrade, walking every job, signing every check. That is coaching or peer-group work, priced by the hour or the month, and it moves as fast as the owner’s habits do.
The WIP schedule shows fade nobody can explain, the bonding agent wants cleaner statements, or cash runs short in the weeks before the GC pays. That is a fractional controller or CFO, priced by the month because the work comes back every month.
Service calls ring out, quotes go unanswered, and the vans run with holes in the schedule. That is a look at the sales path, like the SQUAWKS audit above, starting from the phone.
The work gets done but not paid: T&M tags wait on a super’s signature, approved change orders never reach the schedule of values, retainage sits after closeout with no one chasing it. That is what our Revenue Review reads, once, from the shop’s field system, COR log, pay apps and lien-waiver log, ending in a written report the shop keeps; anything built afterward is scoped and priced separately, in writing.

A shop can carry more than one of these at once. Pay first for the one the records say costs the most, and let the others wait.

What moves an electrical quote: service vans, GC paper and where the tags live

The first thing that moves a quote is how many businesses the shop really runs. Service-and-repair work lives on tickets and flat-rate invoices. GC and project work lives on T&M tags, change order requests, pay applications on G702 and G703 forms, and retainage. A firm asked to read both sides has two sets of paper to follow, and a fair price reflects it.

Next comes where the record sits. When the field software exports tickets and tags, the PM keeps a COR log, and the office can pull a year of pay apps in an afternoon, an outside reader starts counting on day one. When tags ride in truck door pockets and pay apps live in one PM’s inbox, someone has to piece the record back together before a single dollar can be counted, and those hours land on the shop’s bill. Fixed fees help here only when the scope names the side of the business, the records and the months to be read; a fixed price on a vague scope just fixes the size of the surprise.

Red flags that are specific to electrical work

A fee tied to “savings” rewards a baseline the consultant gets to define, and an electrical shop hands over an easy baseline to inflate: count every unsigned tag as “recovered” and the fee grows whether or not the GC ever pays it. The general checks for hiring any consultant — scope, who owns the work product, what stopping costs — are in the guide to choosing an operations consultant listed at the end of this page. These are the ones particular to this trade:

A request for certified payroll with the workers’ personal identifiers left on. A business review needs dollars, dates and job numbers, not who the electricians are.
A margin promise made before anyone has opened the WIP schedule or a job-cost report.
A diagnosis that can only end in the field software, the pricebook or the estimating service the firm resells.
Advice on lien deadlines, notice rules or what counts as written change direction from someone who is not a construction attorney.
A capital offer or a share of the company in place of a fee. That is the sale of part of the business, and it belongs with the shop’s lawyer and CPA.

When the right hire is no one

Some electrical problems need a name, not a firm. The T&M tag that waits days for a super’s signature because getting it signed is nobody’s job needs one person who owns it — the foreman, the PM or the office — and a rule for when it goes to the GC. That fix costs a decision, not a fee.

Other problems belong to licensed people. Lien rights, notice deadlines, prompt-payment claims and disputes over change direction go to a construction attorney. Taxes and the year-end statements a bonding agent reads go to the shop’s CPA. Not legal advice.

Size matters too. Our Review is built for electrical contractors at $1 million a year and up, where a job’s tags, change orders and pay apps are handled by more than one person, and the 20-minute call says so plainly when a shop is smaller. An owner still unsure whether any outside help is worth paying for can start with the two-tap Revenue Self-Audit on this page and decide from what it shows.

Before any next step

What should you do next?

Fix it yourselves.: If the cause is clear, it lives inside one process, and one person can own it — take the play from this page and run it. That outcome is fine with us; it is why the play is published in full.
Order one bounded build.: If the fix is known but needs configuration or integration inside your stack — a cadence wired into your own system, an alert, a handoff — scope that one build, with us or with anyone you trust. The six systems we build show what bounded looks like.
Start with the Review.: If the causes are debatable, the problem crosses departments or systems, or the economics are unclear — diagnose before anyone builds. The Revenue Review: $4,500 fixed, two weeks, computed from your own records. Read a sample finding before you decide — free, no email.

Asked right after

What does an electrical business coach charge by the hour?: ELECTRI International lists virtual coaching at $250 an hour on its own Business Coaching Network page, read October 27, 2026. Group formats price by the month instead: Jackson Advisory Group’s Peer Board starts at $895 a month with no contract, and the Electrical Association of Philadelphia offers members a business-training add-on at $200 a month. To compare an hourly coach with a monthly program, multiply the rate by the hours the written scope calls for and get that total on paper.
What does a fractional CFO cost an electrical contractor?: SPM The Construction CFO prices it by trailing revenue: $2,600 to $5,300 a month for a shop at $1 million to $3.5 million, rising to $6,100 to $14,900 at $9.5 million to $12.5 million, plus a one-time onboarding fee. Profitability Partners states $4,000 to $7,000 a month for most of its engagements. Both were read on the firms’ own pages on October 27, 2026. Kaizen CFO Services gives $2,000 to $6,000 a month as the typical range for a fractional controller at an electrical business. The work comes back every month — job costing, the WIP schedule, the cash forecast — which is why it is priced monthly.
Should an electrical contractor hire a coach or a consultant?: Hire a coach when the constraint is the owner, and a consultant when the constraint is the paper. If every panel upgrade still waits for the owner’s price and every check for the owner’s signature, coaching or a peer group works on that. If signed T&M tags, approved change orders or retainage are not turning into cash, a consultant reading the field system, the COR log and the pay apps answers it more directly. Nothing stops an owner from doing both in order: find where the money leaves first, then buy the help the findings point to.
Is the $4,500 Review worth it for a small electrical shop?: Not below about $1 million a year in revenue. The Review is built for electrical contractors at that size and up, where tags, change orders and pay apps pass through different hands and the records can put a dollar figure on each gap. A one- or two-truck shop is better served by naming one owner for one problem, which costs nothing, and the 20-minute call says so when a shop is below the line.
What records should an electrical contractor give a consultant, and what should stay in the shop?: Read-only access to the field system, the T&M tag book, the COR log, executed change orders, each pay app with its schedule of values, the lien-waiver log and the books is enough to follow a dollar from the field to the bank. Certified payroll with workers’ identifiers on it, bank passwords and anything that lets an outsider move money stay with the shop.

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