A full order book and a tight account. See which week, and why.
An engineering or technical design firm is paid in stages and pays its engineers monthly. Between the two sits most of the owner’s risk: will the next stage payment land before payroll, are fixed fees still covering salaries that went up, and which clients are sitting on invoices. CeoDash answers those from the files you already have — an export from your accounting system, a bank statement — and the first figures show in minutes. Fully connected takes about a day.
You are paid at the milestone. Your engineers are paid every month.
A design stage takes months, the invoice goes out when the client signs it off, and some contracts hold back part of every payment until the project closes. Payroll does not wait for any of that, so a firm with a full order book can still be short in the account.
Fixed fees, rising salaries
A fee quoted at tender is fixed for the life of the project. The engineers delivering it get their annual review in the middle. Every project that runs long, or was priced on last year’s salaries, takes margin out of the firm without anyone signing off on the loss.
Work done is not work billed
Hours go into a stage long before the stage can be invoiced. Until the milestone is reached, that work is money you have spent and cannot yet ask for — and the longer the project, the larger that pile sits on your own balance.
Four questions an engineering firm’s owner answers every week
Three are answered from your books today. The fourth needs timesheets, and we say where they live.
Does the cash hold until the next stage payment?
A rolling 13-week cash forecast from your opening cash, your budget or last closed months, and the real timing of what clients owe and what you owe. It names the week the gap opens and says whether it closes on stage invoices already issued, or only if a tender you are waiting on is won and paid on time.
Are the fees still covering the salaries?
Gross margin and its trend from your own books, month by month, so the effect of a salary round on fixed-fee work shows in the month it lands rather than when the project closes. Ask the AI CFO in words why margin moved and the answer names the figures it used and their source.
How many engineers can the order book carry?
Hours per project, utilisation and project margin are computed from timesheets, and timesheets live in your project or time-tracking tool. CeoDash does not replace that tool and does not guess hours from the ledger. From the books it shows what has to be invoiced, and when, for the team to stay covered.
What do you take to the bank?
A board pack generated from the same live numbers — cash, margin, the weeks ahead — for a lender considering a facility or a partner reviewing the year, plus a revocable read-only link so they can read it without an account.
A facility is easier to agree before you need it
Lenders ask the same questions every owner of a project business should be able to answer on a Monday: when does the cash get tight, by how much, and what closes it.
CeoDash puts those answers on one page from your own books. The forecast shows the weeks between stage payments and says whether each gap closes on invoices already issued or on work still to be won. Overdue invoices, when they arrive with their due dates, are aged by how late they are, so a client who habitually pays after handover is a named line rather than a surprise. The board pack carries the same figures, with their sources, to the bank or your partners — the numbers you show outside are the numbers you run on inside.
Start with a file, connect later
Uploading a CSV or Excel export is free and needs no card. Connect your tools when you want the numbers to refresh without a file. Every name below is live.
- Financial CSV
- Bank statement
- PostgreSQL (read-only)
- Google Calendar
- Gmail
- Manual Google export
- Jira
- Linear
- Manual task import
- Roster upload
- HubSpot
- Client list (CSV)
- Pipeline / Deals CSV
Our projects run for many months. Is a 13-week view long enough?
For cash, yes. Thirteen weeks is long enough to see the next two or three stage payments and the payrolls in between, and short enough that the inputs are real commitments. The project plan stays in your project tool; the forecast answers whether you can pay for it in the meantime.
Some clients hold back part of every payment until handover. Can the forecast show that?
The forecast is built on when money actually arrives, so an amount held back until handover appears when it is due to be released, not when the invoice was raised. That is the difference between the work you have done and the cash you can spend.
Does CeoDash show margin per project?
Not from the ledger alone. Margin per project needs the hours booked to it, which live in your timesheets. CeoDash shows the firm’s margin from your books and how it moves month by month, and does not quote a per-project figure it cannot trace to a source.
We use a project or time-tracking tool already. Do we need to move off it?
No. Tools such as Scoro, Productive or Kantata keep the hours and the allocation. CeoDash works on the money — cash, margin, receivables and the pack for the bank — and sits beside them.
How do we start?
Upload the files you already have — a CSV or Excel export from your accounting system, or a bank statement — and the first figures show in minutes. It is free and needs no card. Connecting your tools so the numbers refresh on their own takes about a day.
- Guide: seeing the cash gap between stage payments and payroll before it opens →
- The four decisions every owner-operator answers, whatever the business →
- What CeoDash reads, and what stays in your other tools →
- Pricing — free with uploads, and what each plan adds →
- Verify us in two weeks on your own numbers →
- Advise rather than design? The consulting page →
See the weeks between stage payments before they become a problem.
Upload the files you already have and the first figures show in minutes. Nothing to build, and no card to start.
No card · Free CSV and Excel uploads · No per-connector charge