Construction & trades
Bookkeeping for construction and trade contractors
A contractor's profit hides inside individual jobs. Books that only total the year tell you the company made money without telling you which work paid for itself.
Most trade contractors know their revenue and their bank balance. Far fewer can say what a specific job cost by the time the punch list was done, because the material run, the subcontractor invoice and the crew hours all landed in different places and none of them carried the job name.
The fix is not more software. It is a consistent habit of tagging every dollar to the job it belongs to, at the moment it is recorded, so the job report at month end is something you can act on rather than something you have to reconstruct.
Where the books go wrong
What we look at first
Costs that never reach a job
Material bought on a supply house account for three jobs at once, a truck load of lumber charged to a personal card, a dump fee paid in cash. Each one quietly moves profit from one job to another.Deposits and progress billings booked as income
Money collected before the work is done is not earned yet. Booking it as revenue in the month it arrived makes a strong month look strong and the following month look terrible.Retainage nobody is tracking
Five or ten percent held back on each draw adds up to real money. When it is not recorded as a receivable, it stops being chased and starts being forgotten.Subcontractors without paperwork
A sub who was paid all season but never gave you a W-9 becomes a January problem. Collecting it at the first payment costs nothing; collecting it eleven months later is a phone call nobody wants to make.
What we do each month
- Every bill, receipt and card charge coded to its job
- Crew hours allocated to jobs from your time records
- Customer deposits and progress billings recorded against the contract, not as income on arrival
- Retainage tracked as a receivable until it is released
- Bank, credit card and equipment loan accounts reconciled
- Subcontractor payments tracked against W-9s, with the year's 1099 figures ready in January
Setting up QuickBooks for it
QuickBooks Online tracks jobs as sub-customers, with items set up for the cost categories you actually bid — labor, materials, subs, equipment, permits — rather than a single 'Job Costs' bucket.
Progress invoicing from an estimate keeps the contract value, the amount billed and the amount remaining in one place, which is also what makes the work in progress report possible.
Bank feed rules can route supply house and fuel charges to the right accounts automatically, but the job tag still needs a human. That is the habit worth building.
Carey is a QuickBooks Online Advanced ProAdvisor, so a file can be set up, cleaned up or migrated as part of the same engagement — see QuickBooks services.
Reporting
The numbers worth watching
Gross profit by job
Revenue less direct labor, material and subcontractor cost, job by job. The one report that says which work to bid more of.Work in progress
What has been billed against what has been earned, so over- and under-billing show up while you can still do something about it.Cash against committed costs
The bank balance is not yours if the material invoices for three jobs are still coming.
Questions we are asked
Can you set up job costing in a file that has run for years without it?
Usually, yes. Going forward is straightforward: the chart of accounts and item list are restructured, and jobs are tagged from a chosen start date. Rebuilding job costs for prior years is a bigger project and only worth doing when there is a specific reason, such as a dispute or a loan application. We would agree the scope before starting either.
Do you handle certified payroll or prevailing wage reporting?
Bookkeeping and payroll records, yes, including tracking hours and wage rates by job. Certified payroll reports and prevailing wage compliance filings are a specialist area, and we would coordinate with whoever handles that for you rather than taking it on ourselves.
Who files the 1099s for my subcontractors?
We keep the records through the year — W-9s collected, payments tracked by vendor — and prepare the figures. The information returns themselves are filed by your tax preparer. For payments made after December 31, 2025, the reporting threshold is $2,000 rather than the older $600 figure.
Start with a conversation
Let's look at your books together
Tell us about your church or business and where your bookkeeping stands. Carey will follow up to arrange a consultation, and you'll receive a written scope before any work begins.