Job Costing
Labor, materials, subcontractors, and equipment coded to the job that incurred them — so you see the real margin on each project, not one blended company number.
Construction Bookkeeping
Books that know the difference between billed and earned.
Sixteen years in construction accounting, where "close enough" costs real money. Job costs coded correctly, retainage tracked, and margins you can actually trust — for contractors anywhere in the country.
01
Why It's Different
A profitable month can still hide a losing job.
In most businesses, the profit and loss statement tells you how you're doing. In construction it doesn't — because the money moves on a completely different schedule than the work. You bill ahead on one job and fall behind on another. Retainage sits unpaid for months after you've finished. A change order rewrites the contract value halfway through.
Add those together and the monthly total stops meaning anything. You can post a strong month while one job quietly bleeds, and not find out until it closes — long after you could have done something about it.
"A bookkeeper who has never worked a job-cost report will balance your books and still leave you blind on the thing that decides whether you made money."
That's the gap this work is built to close. Sixteen of my twenty-two years were spent in construction accounting, and the standard I hold came directly from it: every cost traced to the job that incurred it, because in this industry a rounding error is a bid you shouldn't have won.
02
What's Handled
Built around how jobs actually run.
Everything in monthly bookkeeping still applies — reconciliations, categorization, clean financial statements. These are the pieces that get added on top when the work is contract-based.
No. 01
No. 02
Work In Progress
Costs and billings tracked against each contract, so you can see where you've billed ahead of the work and where the work is ahead of the billing.
No. 03
Retainage
Amounts held back on your receivables tracked as their own balance instead of disappearing into aging — and followed up on when the job closes.
No. 04
Progress Billing
Draws and progress invoices recorded against the schedule of values, so what you billed and what the books say never drift apart.
No. 05
Change Orders
Contract values updated as change orders land, so the job's budget reflects the work you actually agreed to do rather than the original bid.
No. 06
Crew & Subs
Payroll run on schedule with costs hitting the right jobs, and subcontractors tracked separately from employees so year-end 1099s aren't a scramble.
03
Who It's For
Trades, subs, and general contractors.
Most of the businesses I work with run somewhere between a few crews and a few dozen jobs a year — big enough that job-level accuracy matters, small enough that there's no controller on staff to enforce it.
- General contractors managing multiple jobs, subs, and draw schedules at once.
- Subcontractors — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, concrete, framing, roofing — billing progress and waiting on retainage.
- Specialty trades and remodelers running fixed-price work where the margin lives or dies on the estimate.
- Contractors whose books have never been job-costed and who want the history rebuilt before it matters.
You don't need to be in Colorado. The work is handled remotely through secure file sharing, email, and calls, and most clients never need an in-person meeting.
04
Questions
Common questions.
My job costs have never been tracked. Can that be fixed retroactively?
Usually, yes. If the source records exist — invoices, statements, and payroll — the history can be rebuilt and recoded to jobs. That's quoted as a one-time clean-up project after I've seen the scope, separately from ongoing monthly work.
Do you work in the software we already use?
Yes. QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, FreshBooks, Zoho Books, and Wave. QuickBooks Desktop still handles job costing well and plenty of contractors are still on it — if that's you, there's no need to switch.
Are you a CPA?
I'm a bookkeeper, and that's the point. I keep your records accurate at the transaction level all year, then hand your CPA a clean, complete file to work from. I don't prepare or file tax returns, and I work alongside your CPA rather than instead of them.
What does it cost?
It depends on how many jobs you run, your transaction volume, and which services you need — so pricing is quoted per client. You'll always get a flat price in writing before any work begins. No hourly billing, no surprises.
Can you work with contractors outside Colorado?
Yes. I'm based in Thornton, Colorado and work with clients remotely across the country. If you're local and prefer to meet face to face, that works too.
Find out what your jobs are really making.
First consultation is always free. Call (303) 656-3763 or send a note.