Working with Contractors
Adding Contractors
Good contractors are the difference between a profitable deal and a money pit. Kaison lets you build a roster of contractors, track their performance across deals, and make informed decisions about who to hire next.
From the sidebar, click Contractors under the Portfolio group. Click Add Contractor to create a new record.
Contractor Fields
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Name | Contractor or company name |
| Trade | Primary specialty (General, Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC, Roofing, Flooring, Painting, Landscaping) |
| Phone / Email | Contact information |
| Rating | Your initial assessment (1–5 stars) |
| Notes | Free-form notes — specialties, availability, quirks |
Pro tip
Add every contractor you work with, even if you only used them once. Over time, your contractor roster becomes one of your most valuable assets — a curated list of people you have actually worked with, scored by real data from real deals.
Dispatch Scoring
When you have worked with a contractor on one or more jobs, Kaison calculates a dispatch score — a weighted composite that tells you how reliable this contractor actually is based on hard data, not gut feeling.
The Scoring Formula
The dispatch score is a weighted average of four dimensions:
| Dimension | Weight | What It Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 35% | Did they finish on time? How close to the estimated timeline? |
| Budget | 30% | Did they stay within the estimated cost? How big were the overruns? |
| Quality | 25% | Your quality rating after each job |
| Responsiveness | 10% | Communication and availability |
How Kaison uses this
The dispatch score updates automatically after each completed job. When you need a plumber for your next deal, you can sort contractors by score within their trade and immediately see who has the best track record. Reliability is weighted highest because a contractor who finishes on time saves you holding costs — and holding costs are where most rehab profits leak.
Tracking Performance Across Deals
A contractor's score on a single job might not tell the full story. Maybe they had a bad supplier on one project, or the scope changed mid-job. What matters is the pattern across multiple engagements.
Kaison tracks every assignment — estimated cost vs actual cost, estimated duration vs actual duration, and your quality rating — and aggregates those into the contractor's overall score. The more jobs you complete with a contractor, the more reliable their score becomes.
Example
Say you hired a general contractor for three rehab jobs:
| Job | Budget | Actual | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 742 Birchwood | $30,000 | $28,400 | On time |
| 315 Elm St | $22,000 | $26,100 | 2 weeks over |
| 891 Maple Dr | $35,000 | $34,800 | On time |
This contractor came in under budget twice and over once. They hit the timeline on two out of three jobs. The overall score reflects that pattern — solid but not perfect. The one overrun at 315 Elm pulls the budget dimension down, but the reliability and consistency across the other jobs keeps the score healthy.
Expense Association
Every rehab expense in Kaison can be linked to a contractor. When you log an expense on a property — whether it is a draw payment, a materials receipt, or a final invoice — you can associate it with the contractor who did the work.
This association does two things:
1. Budget tracking. On the property detail page, you can see exactly how much you have paid each contractor against their estimated cost for the job. If your plumber quoted $4,200 and you have already paid $3,800 in draws, you know there is $400 remaining before you are over.
2. Score calculation. The expense data feeds directly into the dispatch scoring formula. Actual cost vs estimated cost determines the budget dimension of the contractor's score. You do not need to enter scores manually — they are calculated from the real financial data.
How Kaison uses this
When you run a deal analysis for a new property and estimate $30,000 in rehab costs, Kaison can compare that estimate against what your contractors have historically charged for similar work. If your go-to general contractor averages 8% over budget, the engine can factor that into the risk assessment automatically.
Educational content only. Consult a CPA or attorney for advice specific to your situation.