Roofing Back Office

Pricing

What shapes a scope of work

We do not publish rates. Scope cannot be priced before it is known, and a figure printed here would be one we invented to look reassuring. What follows is the framework we price against, so you can see your own engagement before you ask about it.

Nate Jones · Founder, Roofing Back Office

Nate Jones is the founder of Roofing Back Office. He writes every proposal himself, which is why they name a scope rather than a package, and why one occasionally comes back smaller than the enquiry.

Last updated · Reviewed by Nate Jones

The reason for the position is structural rather than coy. A back office is priced against a scope of work, and a scope of work is a description of which functions get run, at what volume, in which systems, over which hours. Two roofing companies of the same size can sit a long way apart on every one of those, so a single published figure would have to be either the most expensive plausible engagement or the cheapest, and both are misleading in different directions.

What we can do is show you the dimensions, so the conversation starts with you already knowing roughly where you sit on each. Nothing below has a range attached, deliberately — a range is a number wearing a hedge, and it would anchor you to a figure we have not earned the right to give.

Five things that move the answer

  • Which functions

    A single desk The whole back office

    The largest single factor, and the most obvious. One well-defined function is a different engagement from nine interlocking ones, and the difference is not simply additive — some functions get cheaper to run together because they share a record, and some get harder because they need reconciling against each other.

  • Transaction volume

    Steady and predictable High and spiky

    Not company size. A smaller company running heavy claim volume can carry more back-office load than a larger one doing straightforward retail work. What matters is how many things happen that need recording, chasing or answering, and how evenly they arrive.

  • Platform complexity

    One system, well kept Several, and disagreeing

    Working inside a single well-maintained system is straightforward. Working across several that hold overlapping records, none of which quite agree, means part of every task is reconciliation before the task itself begins. Migration or cleanup, where it is needed, is scoped separately rather than absorbed silently.

  • Coverage hours

    Business hours Extended and after-hours

    A desk covering the hours your office already keeps is a different commitment from one covering evenings, weekends or a storm surge. Coverage is defined in the scope of work rather than assumed, because an expectation of availability that was never written down is the most common source of disappointment in this arrangement.

  • Seasonality

    Level through the year Sharply seasonal

    Roofing rarely runs flat. An engagement built for your quiet months will fail in your busy ones, and one built for peak is being paid for through the trough. How the scope flexes — and what triggers the flex — is agreed up front rather than negotiated in the middle of a surge.

Five inputs, and a result that cannot be filled in yet Five labelled tiles are stacked on the left, reading which functions, transaction volume, platform complexity, coverage hours, and seasonality. A large brace to their right gathers all five and points into a single tall box on the far right. That box is drawn with a dashed outline and is deliberately empty, labelled only as your scope of work. A note beneath records that the box on the right cannot be filled until the tiles on the left are known, and that this is the reason no figure is printed on the page. The diagram shows structure only and contains no figures. What has to be known first Which functions Transaction volume Platform complexity Coverage hours Seasonality Your scope of work written after the discovery call The box on the right is empty on purpose. It cannot be filled in until the tiles on the left are known.
Every tile on the left moves the answer independently, which is why a single published figure would have to ignore four of them. The dashed box is not a placeholder for something we are withholding — it is the shape of the thing a discovery call exists to produce.

Tell us your shape

Answer against the five dimensions above in whatever detail you have. You will get a written proposal naming the functions we would take, what happens inside each, what stays with you, and what it costs. If we think the scope you have described is wrong, we will say so before quoting it.

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Which functions are you thinking about?

Questions about cost

Why is there no price list?

Because a price list would require us to know your scope before you have told us what it is, and the honest version of that is a number invented to look reassuring. The functions, the volume, the systems and the hours all move the answer independently. Publishing a figure would mean either quoting the most expensive plausible engagement, which is misleading, or the cheapest, which is worse.

Is this hourly?

The engagement is defined by a scope of work rather than by time. What you agree to is a set of functions, what happens inside each one, and what the reporting looks like — and what you are told is what running that scope costs. That is deliberate: paying for time makes efficiency your problem to police, and paying for a function makes it ours.

What is the smallest engagement you would take?

A single function, genuinely. Some of the most useful engagements start with one desk that is visibly costing the owner attention, and stay there. We would rather run one function well than take a broad scope neither side has thought through, and a first proposal that covers less than you asked about is usually us saying we can see where the real problem is.

How long until we get a number?

After the discovery call, in a written proposal that names the scope the number attaches to. We do not quote in the call itself. A figure given before the scope is written down is a figure that will be revised, and revising it later reads as a bait even when it is not.

Can the scope change once we start?

Yes, in writing, and it usually does. The first month of running a function is when its real shape becomes visible, and a scope that never changes afterwards is normally one nobody is looking at closely. What does not happen is a change that appears on an invoice before it appeared in a document you agreed.

What if we only need help during storm season?

That is a scoped engagement rather than a refusal. Seasonal shapes need more definition than continuous ones, not less — what triggers the ramp, what the desk covers while it is running, what happens to the records between seasons, and how it stands back up. Those questions get settled before the first busy week, not during it.

Related

Scope first, then a number attached to it

The proposal names what we would take and what stays with you. If the scope is wrong you will find out reading it, not paying for it.

Start the proposal Or just get in touch