Fractional CFO for service businesses

Find where your business actually makes and loses money.

Then fix what happens next. Route Margin gives owner-run service companies a CFO's view of their numbers every month, with AI doing the heavy lifting and an experienced finance executive doing the thinking.

Start a conversation erik@routemargin.pro

What you get

A finance function you'd normally need a full-time CFO for, delivered as a monthly package. It's built on your existing books and systems, so there's nothing new for your team to learn.

Every month

A written P&L review

What moved, why it moved, and what to do about it, in plain English. You read it in ten minutes, and we only get on a call when something needs a decision.

The big one

Customer and route profitability

Which customers, routes and contracts make money, which ones quietly lose it, and what to do about it.

Every month

An owner's dashboard

Sales, operations and finance on one page, so you can see the business the way a buyer or a lender would.

When you buy

Acquisition support

Looking at buying a competitor? Before you close, find out which of its customers actually make money, and what the business is really earning.

Results

What this looked like at a route-based business

The owner cut a quarter of his customer list, and both revenue and profits went up.

44.3% → 49.8%
Gross margin, sustained twelve months
+$204,000 (+32%)
Annual gross profit
$2.97M → $3.40M
Revenue, after shedding $460K of it

The situation

A new owner bought a $3M route-based business in January 2025 with roughly 1,000 customer sites and no idea which of them made money. Nobody did. The P&L only showed the company total.

What I did

  • Showed the owner what every individual customer was actually worth.
  • Put a dollar figure on the accounts that were losing money.
  • The owner sold that book to another operator, and the cost left with the revenue.
  • Gave the sales team a way to price new work to a margin target.
  • Put ongoing reporting in place so sales, costs and financials stay visible month to month.

Used with the owner's permission.

Who it's for

Owner-run companies that have outgrown the owner's ability to see every number, but aren't ready for a full-time CFO.

  • Route and facility services: commercial cleaning, sweeping, field services and other recurring-contract businesses.
  • A single company with clean, reconciled books.
  • An owner who wants a straight answer each month, in writing.
  • Businesses thinking about growth, including buying smaller competitors.
Erik Alberts

Erik Alberts

Founder, Route Margin LLC

I've spent 29 years in finance and supply chain at Fortune 500 technology companies. Today I set and execute strategy for a $300M service logistics business, including its AI roadmap. Finding cost and improving margins without losing the customer is what I've done my whole career.

Through Route Margin, I'm the fractional CFO for a route services company and a professional services firm, driving value-added improvements for both. For the route services company, I've improved gross margin by 5.5 percentage points while helping to grow gross profit by 32%.

I co-wrote Customer Service DNA (Cedar Fort, 2015) and hold a BS in Managerial Economics from UC Davis. I'm based in Miami.

Let's talk about your numbers

Tell me a little about your business and what you wish you could see in your numbers. I'll tell you honestly whether Route Margin is a fit.

Email Erik