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Construction and the trades

Bookkeeping for contractors in Ventura County

Profitable on paper and short on cash is the oldest problem in the trades. It almost always means job costing, retainage and progress billing are not being tracked the way the work actually happens.

We cost every job including labor burden, track retainage and work in progress, and tell you at the end of each month which jobs made money and which ones quietly did not.

Book a free 20-minute call 805-225-4959

Every contractor client gets

Job by job, not just month by month.

  • Costs coded to the job, labor burden included
  • Retainage tracked so you know what you are still owed
  • A WIP schedule showing over and under billing
  • Job profitability every month, reviewed on a call

Three things that break contractors' books

These are the ones we find in almost every file we take over.

No job costing

Every cost lands in one bucket

Materials, subs and payroll all go to a single cost of goods sold line. You can see the company made twenty percent, but not that two jobs made thirty and one lost fifteen, so you keep bidding the losing kind of work.

Result: you cannot tell a good job from a bad one.

No WIP

Billing and completion drift apart

Bill ahead of the work and the month looks great, then the costs arrive later and it looks terrible. Bill behind and you have earned money the books do not show. Without a work in progress schedule, neither is visible.

Result: profit that moves for reasons nobody can explain.

Retainage

Money you cannot collect yet

Five or ten percent of every job sits held back until completion, sometimes far longer. In the books it usually looks like an ordinary receivable, so your aging report says you are owed money that nobody is late paying.

Result: a cash forecast that is quietly wrong.

What's included

The monthly cycle, built for contractors

  • Job costing: labor, materials, subcontractors and equipment coded to the job as they happen rather than sorted out at year end
  • Work in progress schedule: costs to date against the contract, so you can see what is overbilled and what is underbilled
  • Retainage: tracked separately from ordinary receivables and payables, both what is held from you and what you hold from subs
  • Change orders: recorded against the job so approved work is billed and unapproved work is visible before it is forgotten
  • Subcontractor compliance: W-9s collected, insurance certificates tracked, and 1099s issued at year end without a scramble
  • Payroll: run through Gusto and allocated to jobs, so labor lands where the work happened
  • Monthly reporting: gross margin by job, the WIP schedule, and a call to go through what changed

Who this is for

  • General contractors
  • Specialty trades electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing
  • Landscape and hardscape
  • Remodel and design build
  • Solar and specialty installers

Residential or commercial, from an owner with a crew of three to a company running several jobs at once.

Typical fit

Contractors doing roughly $500K to $10M a year, with jobs that run long enough that billing and completion do not line up on their own.

The one report that tells you the truth

A work in progress schedule compares what a job has cost so far against what the whole job is expected to cost, works out how far along it really is, and compares that to how much you have billed.

The gap between those two is where contractors get surprised. Billed more than you have earned and the extra is not profit, it is money you owe in work. Earned more than you have billed and you are financing the customer without meaning to. Neither shows up anywhere on a standard P&L.

We update it every month and walk you through it on the call, so an overbilled job is something you know about while you can still plan around it rather than something you discover when the work runs out.

What the schedule shows

  • Contract value, including approved change orders
  • Costs to date and estimated cost to complete
  • Percentage complete based on cost, not gut feel
  • Revenue earned to date against amount billed
  • Overbillings and underbillings by job
  • Estimated gross margin, and whether it is moving

If your bonding agent or lender asks for a WIP schedule, this is what they want to see.

How it starts

Three steps, and the first two cost you nothing.

1. A 20-minute call

What you build, how many jobs run at once, how you bill, and what you currently cannot answer about job profitability.

2. A quote in 24 hours

A flat monthly price in writing, plus a separate one-time fee if the job costing has to be rebuilt first.

3. Setup and first close

Job structure set up, open jobs loaded with costs to date, then your first close with a WIP schedule in it.

What we do not do

Said up front, so nobody finds out in month three.

  • We do not file certified payroll for public works jobs. Prevailing wage reporting is its own specialty and it needs someone who does it every week.
  • We do not estimate or bid. We show you what past jobs actually cost so your estimating gets better, but the bid is yours.
  • We do not prepare bonding or lender financials. We keep the books and the WIP schedule accurate so your CPA can build them from something solid.
  • We do not handle lien filings, preliminary notices or contract review. Those are legal deadlines and they need an attorney or a service that specializes in them.
  • We do not decide whether a worker is an employee or a contractor. We will flag it when it looks wrong and tell you to get advice, because in California that call carries real consequences.

Contractor bookkeeping FAQ

Do I need construction software, or will QuickBooks do?

QuickBooks Online handles job costing well enough for most contractors up to a few million in revenue, provided it is set up properly. Most of the files we take over are not, which is usually the actual problem rather than the software.

You start needing a dedicated construction system when you have many concurrent jobs, complex progress billing, or equipment costing that has to be allocated by hour. We will tell you which side of that line you are on rather than selling you something.

Percentage of completion or completed contract?

It depends on your size, your contract lengths and your tax situation, and it is a decision to make with your CPA rather than one we make alone.

What we can tell you is that even contractors filing on a completed contract basis benefit from a WIP schedule internally. Knowing where a job stands is a management question before it is a tax one.

How do you handle retainage?

It gets its own account, separate from ordinary receivables, so your aging report shows what is genuinely late rather than mixing in money nobody owes you yet.

We track it both ways, what customers hold from you and what you hold from your subs, and we flag retainage that should have been released. On a lot of files, that is the first real cash we find.

Can you do certified payroll?

No. Prevailing wage and certified payroll reporting for public works is a specialty with its own deadlines and its own filing systems, and doing it occasionally is how mistakes happen.

We run your regular payroll through Gusto and allocate it to jobs. If you take public works, we will happily work alongside whoever handles the certified side.

What about my subcontractors and 1099s?

We collect W-9s before the first payment rather than chasing them in January, track insurance certificates and their expiry dates, and issue 1099s at year end.

The expiry tracking matters more than it sounds. A sub working on a lapsed certificate is a problem that lands on you, and it is the kind of thing bookkeeping is well placed to catch.

My books have never been job costed. Can you fix that?

Yes. We review the file for free, then quote the rebuild as a separate one-time engagement so you can see what fixing the history costs against the monthly service.

How far back it is worth going depends on your open jobs. Sometimes the answer is to cost the open jobs properly, start clean going forward, and leave the closed ones alone.

Find out which jobs actually made money

Twenty minutes on the phone and you'll have a flat quote within a day.

Book a free 20-minute call 805-225-4959