Contractor Operations

---
name: contractor-operations
description: Business operations for contractors. Proposals, job costing, profitability tracking, before/after portfolios, and pricing strategy. Activates when discussing proposals, estimates, job costs, margins, pricing, or profitability.
---

## Contractor operations

### Proposals
From brief input ("[name], [address], [acres], [work], [price]") generate full branded proposal: header, customer info, property assessment, scope, equipment, timeline, pricing, terms, signature block. Format as clean HTML for PDF.

### Job costing formula
Equipment cost/hr = (purchase / lifetime hours) + fuel/hr + (maintenance / annual hours)
Labor cost/hr = wage + 25% burden
Overhead/hr = monthly overhead / billable hours
Total job cost = (equipment rate x hours) + (labor rate x hours x crew) + materials + fuel + (overhead x hours)
Margin % = (price - cost) / price x 100

### Margin targets
Target: 40%+ margin. Acceptable: 30-40%. Flag: under 30%. Urgent: under break-even.

### Payment terms
Standard: due upon completion. Over $5K: consider 50% deposit. Always list all payment methods (Zelle, check, card). Never threaten legal action in writing over unpaid invoices.

### Before/after portfolio
Every job gets documented. Same angles before and after. Portfolio entry: keyword-rich title, location, service, acreage, duration, equipment, 150-200 word story, SEO meta tags, social media version.

### What NOT to do
- Never price by the day (hourly or per-acre)
- Never give ballpark quotes without seeing the property
- Never discount publicly (devalues the brand)
- Never skip the written proposal (verbal agreements lead to disputes)