North Canton, Ohio · Serving NE Ohio job shops
See where your shop actually makes and loses money — in plain English, without a full-time finance hire. I'm Grant Brand, a financial analyst in North Canton, and I built this specifically for owner-run shops doing $500K–$5M.
No pitch. No sales deck. Just your numbers, in plain English.
The big fractional CFO firms won't touch a shop under $5M. That's exactly who I built this for.
Owner-operated machine shops, job shops, and fab shops doing $500K–$5M across Stark County and the Akron–Canton corridor.
Sound familiar?
The ones that felt good often didn't. The annoying ones sometimes did. Without real job costing, you're pricing the next quote blind.
Revenue's up, cash isn't, and nobody can tell you exactly why.
If it hasn't been rebuilt against real overhead and machine hours lately, every quote is leaving money on the table or buying work you'll regret.
Your CPA files your taxes in April. Nobody's telling you what the numbers mean in August.
How it works
View-only reports — never logins, never bank access. I'll send you the exact click-by-click list; it takes your office ten minutes.
Your shop's numbers on one page: margin trends, cash position, and where the money's actually going. Delivered within a week.
Ten minutes, plain English. What's working, what's leaking, and what to do about it.
What it costs
Free
Your shop's numbers on one page, built from your QuickBooks exports, walked through in 10 minutes. No pitch, no email gymnastics, no invoice.
Ideal for: seeing what I do before spending a dime.
$250 one-time
A 30-minute working session on your numbers: where margin is leaking, which customers are worth keeping, what to watch this quarter. You keep a written plain-English summary.
Ideal for: real answers before committing to anything monthly.
$400/month
An updated dashboard and a one-page report every month: what changed, why, and what to do about it. Numbers you'll actually read, in time to act on them.
Ideal for: a monthly read on the business without another meeting.
$650/month
Everything in Monthly Clarity, plus a 30-minute call every month to talk through decisions: pricing, hiring, that machine you're eyeing.
Ideal for: a numbers guy in your corner year-round.
Shops north of $3M: figure roughly $600 / $1,000 for the two monthly plans — more books, more to analyze.
A real fractional CFO runs $3,000–$10,000 a month. One mis-priced job can cost more than a year of this.
Who you'd be working with
I'm Grant Brand. I'm a financial analyst by trade — margin analysis, forecasting, and cost work for a multi-million-dollar company is my day job. Caliper Financial Group exists because nobody was doing that work for the shops that actually build things around here.
I'm not a CPA and I don't replace yours. Your CPA looks backward and files your taxes. I look at what's happening now and tell you what it means — in English, not accountant.
Based in Hartville. I like doing this in person when it makes sense — you learn a lot about a shop by standing on the floor instead of just reading its books.
The gap
~15% vs ~8%
Top-performing machine shops run around 15% net margin. The rest average closer to 8. The difference usually isn't the machines — it's knowing the numbers. Do you know yours?
The free Shop Snapshot
No pitch. No commitment. Send me your QuickBooks exports and in a week you'll see your shop the way I see it — then decide if it's worth anything to you.
Send me an emailgrant@caliperfinancialgroup.com — I read every email myself and reply within one business day.
Fair questions
No — and you wouldn't want that. I don't touch your bookkeeping. I read what's already there and tell you what it means.
Your CPA looks at the past and files your taxes — important work, and I don't do it. I look forward: what this month's numbers say about your pricing, your customers, and your cash. The two jobs are complementary, not competing.
I only ever work from view-only report exports — never logins, never bank access. I sign a confidentiality agreement before you send me anything, and I'll tell you exactly how your files are stored and when they're deleted.
That's the point — you don't have to be. You run the shop; I read the numbers and give them to you in plain English. One page a month, no homework.