A contractor's gross profit margin has fallen from 30% to 22% over a year. The most useful first step to diagnose why is to:

Giải thích

A falling gross margin means direct cost is taking a larger share of revenue, and only the job-cost reports say whether the cause is labour hours, material prices or subcontract cost, so that is where the diagnosis starts. Raising the markup treats the symptom before the cause is known and may simply lose bids. The franchise tax is an income tax below the gross-margin line and cannot move it. And bonding is a licensing requirement with no effect on job cost at all.