The Number That Prices Every Bid You Send

On the list of fires: “the number that prices your bids”

Module 11 · Safety & the Comp Bill · Play 3 of 5

The problem in one breath

Once your payroll is big enough for your state to rate you, a number sits on your workers' comp policy — your experience mod — and where it applies it multiplies your premium before the bill ever reaches you. You didn't pick it, and you probably can't say what it is without digging. It rides inside the labor cost of every square you quote.

Why it happens

Comp shows up once a year as a bill, and a bill feels like weather. It lands, you grumble, you pay it, you go sell more work. Nobody explains what sits behind the number, and the paperwork that would explain it doesn't turn up unless you ask. So the line that quietly prices your labor is the one nobody ever works — while claims from two winters back sit open with money parked against them.

The play

Ask for the worksheet, not just the number. Have your agent send the worksheet behind your mod — the payroll and the claims it was built from — and read it with him on the phone. Which years count. How an open claim's reserve gets treated. What counts as average in your class. None of that is the same in every state, so make him walk you through yours.
Check that the payroll and the class codes are yours. Put your payroll records beside the worksheet. Are those your wage totals? Is the guy who runs the office all week sitting in a field code? Anything that doesn't match, you put in writing.
Put every claim on the claim log with a reserve and a date. One row each: what happened, the claim number, what the carrier says it is holding on it, and the date you last got a straight answer from the adjuster. A claim nobody asks about is a claim that sits.
Work the log with your agent once a quarter. Thirty minutes on the calendar, treated like a job. Go down the open ones: what's the reserve today, what's it waiting on, what would close it. Every row leaves with one name and one date.
Report an injury the day it happens. Not Friday, not after the weekend. The man gets care sooner and your file carries one straight story while the roof is fresh in everybody's head. The first hour is its own play (Play 4); the much shorter clock a death or a hospital admission starts sits on the OSHA card (Play 2).

Once you know what the mod is adding, put that money in your labor number where it belongs (Module 6, Play 6).

Do this this week

Call your agent today and ask for two things: the worksheet behind your mod, and the current reserve on every open claim. Read the card below out loud if it helps. Ten minutes, then write on the calendar the day that paperwork is supposed to land.

The tool

Get the sheet Get the card file

Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or LibreOffice. Grab it on the phone now — it’ll be waiting on the computer at the shop.

The comp cost sheet — three tabs, built off numbers you copy straight from your own declarations page.

Tab one takes the premium line your mod applies to, and the mod, and shows what that line comes to with the mod on it, what the mod by itself is adding, and what the same line would run at a mod 0.10 better, 0.25 better, 0.10 worse, and at 1.00. Nothing on it is an industry figure; if your page doesn't work out this way, your page wins. Tab two is the claim log: one row per claim with the carrier's reserve, the date you last asked, and a red ASK AGAIN on anything open you haven't touched in ninety days. Tab three answers the other question — not what the bill is, but what comp adds to every dollar of wages. Put each class code's payroll and its rate per $100 in, and it returns that code's share of its own payroll. That share is what you carry into a bid, and it's the number the crew-model sheet wants (Module 12, Play 1). Use your roofing code's share for crew wages, never the blended shop figure — office payroll drags that one down. the sheet notes below has the formulas.

The call itself, word for word:

THE AGENT CALL — the two things to ask for, ten minutes

Agent: ____________________________   Date of call: __________

SAY THIS:
 "I want to understand what my comp is actually costing me.
  Two things.

  One: send me the worksheet behind my experience mod - the
  paperwork with the payroll and the claims it was built
  from. Not the number. The worksheet.

  Two: every open claim on my policy - the claim number,
  what the carrier is holding in reserve on it right now,
  and what it is waiting on to close.

  When can you have both to me?"

THEN ASK:
  "Which line on my declarations page does the mod apply to?"
  "Who is the adjuster on each open claim, and their number?"
  "Can we put thirty minutes on the calendar every quarter
   and go through the open ones together?"

WRITE IT DOWN:
  Worksheet promised by: __________   Landed: __________
  Open claims he named: ____   Reserve total $: __________
  My next move: ______________________  By: __________

If your crew is 1099

The mod doesn't stop being yours because the men are subs. Whose payroll ends up counted on your policy — and so inside this number — depends on your state and on what paper your subs carry. Ask your agent straight: which of my subs get counted as mine, and what would it take to get them off that line? That's the certificate log (Play 5). Either way, the claim log covers every claim sitting on your policy.

One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it's not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It's your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.

M11-03 · The Number That Prices Every Bid You Send — Roofer MBA, https://roofermba.com/plays/safety/the-number-that-prices-your-bids

The sheet notes

How the sheet works — the columns and the formulas

The columns, the formulas behind them, and the judgment calls — so you can rebuild it by hand if you ever need to.

What it does

Three tabs. Comp Cost takes two numbers off your own policy — the premium before your mod, and your mod — and shows you three things: what that line comes to once the mod is applied, what the mod by itself is adding, and what a better or worse mod would be worth in dollars. Claim Log is one row per comp claim, open or closed, with the dollars the carrier is still holding on each one and a red flag on any open claim you have never chased, or haven't asked about in ninety days. Share of Payroll turns the same declarations page into what comp adds to every dollar of wages — the number you need when you are pricing labor rather than looking at a bill.

Nothing on any of the three tabs is an industry figure except the example rates on tab three, which are labelled as made up. Every other number is yours or is worked out from yours. The example cells are yellow — type your own numbers straight over them.

How to use it

Pull your policy's declarations page. Put the premium before the mod in B6 and your mod in B7. If you can't find either one, that's the call to your agent this week.
Read B8 — that line with the mod applied — and B9, the dollars the mod alone is putting on it. B9 is the number to carry into your next bid conversation.
Read the WHAT MOVING THE MOD IS WORTH block. It reprices the same policy at a mod 0.10 and 0.25 better, 0.10 worse, and at 1.00, and shows the difference against what you pay today.
On the Claim Log tab, put in every open claim: date, man, what happened, claim number, the reserve your carrier shows, and the last date you actually asked the adjuster about it.
Once a quarter, sit with your agent and work the log top to bottom. Anything showing ASK AGAIN in red is a claim nobody has chased in ninety days, or has never chased at all.

The Comp Cost tab

Cell	What it is
B6 Premium before your mod	Off your declarations page, before the mod is applied. You type it — the sheet never prices anything.
B7 Your experience mod	Your rating bureau's number, applied by your carrier — not one you pick. Ask your agent for the worksheet behind it.
B8 That line with the mod applied	Auto: premium × mod. Your declarations page is the authority on what the whole bill comes to.
B9 What the mod itself is adding	Auto: the difference between the two. Red, because that's the part your claim history is buying.
A13:D17 the mod block	Four scenarios plus today, each repriced off the same premium, with the difference against today's number.

The Claim Log tab

Column	What it is
A Date of injury	The day it happened.
B Man	Who got hurt.
C What happened	One line, plain.
D Claim #	The carrier's number for it — so you can ask about it by name.
E Status	Open / Closed (dropdown). The sheet won't accept any other word — a typo drops the row out of every count.
F Reserve $	What the carrier says it's still holding on the claim. Their number, not your guess.
G Last time you asked	The date you last got a straight answer from the adjuster.
H Next move	The exact next call.
I Flag	Auto: ASK AGAIN in red on any open claim you have never chased, or haven't asked about in ninety days.

Box on the right: Open claims, $ held on open claims, Not asked about in 90 days, and Closed claims.

The Share of Payroll tab

The Comp Cost tab answers "what is this bill?" This tab answers a different question: "what does comp add to an hour of wages?" You need the second one to price a job, and it is the number the crew-model sheet in Module 12 Play 1 asks for in its workers'-comp row.

One row per class code on your declarations page. You type what the payroll covers, how much payroll sits in that code, and that code's rate per $100 of payroll. The sheet works out the comp dollars in each code, and — in the column that matters — the share of that code's own payroll, which is just its rate times your mod, divided by 100.

Underneath, it adds the codes up and shows a blended share for the whole shop — but only once every code that has payroll in it also has its rate typed in. A half-filled sheet would otherwise blend the codes you finished with the ones you didn't and print a believable, wrong percentage, so it stays blank instead. The per-code column on the right does not wait for that; a code's own share is good the moment its rate and your mod are in.

The two numbers are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is the whole reason this tab exists. Office payroll is rated far lower than roof work, so it drags the blended number down. In the example the roofing code lands at 35.00% while the blended shop figure is 29.49% — put the blended one into a crew's labor cost and you have quietly under-priced every roof you sell. Use the roofing row's own share for crew wages; the blended number is for overhead.

Rates, class codes, and whether your shop is experience-rated at all come off your declarations page and your state's rating bureau. The rates in the example are made up so you can watch the sheet run. One sanity check the sheet can't do for you: roof work is rated in whole dollars per $100, so a roofing row showing a share under one percent means you typed a percentage where a rate goes.

Formulas (so you can rebuild it by hand)

What you pay after the mod (B8): =IF(AND($B$6<>"",$B$7<>""),$B$6*$B$7,"")
What the mod is adding (B9): =IF(AND($B$6<>"",$B$7<>""),$B$6*$B$7-$B$6,"")
Scenario mods (B14:B16): =IF($B$7<>"",MAX($B$7-0.1,0),""), …MAX($B$7-0.25,0)…, =IF($B$7<>"",$B$7+0.1,"")
You'd pay (C13, fill down): =IF(AND($B$6<>"",$B13<>""),$B$6*$B13,"")
Difference vs. today (D13, fill down): =IF(AND($C13<>"",$C$13<>""),$C13-$C$13,"")
Claim flag (I5, fill down): =IF(AND($A5<>"",$E5="Open",OR($G5="",TODAY()-$G5>90)),"ASK AGAIN","")
Box (L4:L7): =COUNTIF($E$5:$E$24,"Open"), =SUMIF($E$5:$E$24,"Open",$F$5:$F$24), =COUNTIF($I$5:$I$24,"ASK AGAIN"), =COUNTIF($E$5:$E$24,"Closed")

Only IF, AND, OR, MAX, TODAY, COUNTIF and SUMIF are used — no new-Excel-only functions — so it opens and computes in old Excel, Numbers, and LibreOffice.

Share of Payroll tab

Comp before your mod, per code (D6, fill down to D10): =IF(AND($B6<>"",$C6<>""),$B6/100*$C6,"")
Share of this code's payroll (E6, fill down to E10): =IF(AND($C6<>"",$B$12<>""),$C6*$B$12/100,"")
Total payroll (B13): =SUM($B$6:$B$10)
Comp before the mod (B14): =SUM($D$6:$D$10)
Comp after the mod (B15): =IF(OR($B$13<=0,$B$12="",COUNT($B$6:$B$10)<>COUNT($D$6:$D$10)),"",$B$14*$B$12)
Blended share, whole shop (B16): =IF($B$15="","",$B$15/$B$13)

Only IF, OR, SUM and COUNT are used on this tab.

Notes and judgment calls

The sheet multiplies; it does not rate. Premium × mod is the arithmetic your declarations page already does. How your mod itself gets built — what years it looks at, how a claim's reserve feeds it, what counts as average in your class — is set by your state's rating bureau and your carrier, and it is not the same everywhere. Ask your agent to walk you through your own worksheet; don't take a rule of thumb from a spreadsheet.
If your own numbers don't multiply out this way, your page wins. Some policies show credits, discounts, assessments, or a fixed expense piece that sits outside the mod. Put the premium line the mod actually applies to in B6, and if you're not sure which line that is, that's the question for the agent.
1.00 is not a claim about what's average. It's just the point where the mod stops moving the number. The "At 1.00" row is there so you can see the whole of what your history is costing.
The scenarios floor at zero. A 0.25-better row on a mod already under 0.25 shows 0.00 rather than a negative. It's a guard, not a prediction — mods have their own floor, and yours comes out of your state's rating bureau, not out of this sheet.
Reserves are the carrier's number, not yours. Write down what they tell you and the date they told you. The point of column G isn't paperwork; it's that a claim nobody asks about is a claim that sits.
The log stops at row 24. Every box formula counts rows 5 through 24, and nothing on screen marks where the block ends, so a claim typed on row 25 is invisible to the counts. Add rows by right-clicking inside the block and choosing Insert — the count ranges stretch on their own, but drag the Flag cell down from the row above or the new claim will never flag.
The sheet ships with its numbers already saved in it, so a phone preview shows real figures; they recalculate the moment you type.

The one thing

Do this this week

Take it with you

Get the sheet Get the card file

One email unlocks this and every other sheet and card on the site. The plays stay free.

Same fire

Your workers' comp bill keeps climbing

M11-03the number that prices your bids — you’re here
M11-05the sub with no paper

All the fires →

Fixed this?

Comp rides on your payroll, so a mod you never look at is quietly priced into every bid you write.

The fire right behind it is usually Jobs sell but the profit isn't there.