Tree services
Bookkeeping for tree services
Workers’ comp is your second payroll. Storm season is a second business. Most tree company books show neither clearly.
One wrong class code reprices your whole payroll
Tree pruning and removal carry one of the most expensive workers’ comp classifications in existence. For a lot of tree companies the premium is the second largest cost in the business, behind the wages it is calculated on.
Premium is payroll multiplied by class code
Not every hour you pay for belongs in the same code. Climbers, ground crew, chipper and yard time, and the landscaping-adjacent work some of your people do can fall under different classifications. The split is legitimate. It has to be visible in the records. At audit the burden is yours, and an auditor who cannot see which wages belong where does not split the difference. Payroll moves to the highest rate on the policy, for the whole year. Coding it correctly as you go is the defence, which is one of the five things construction books have to do.
Storm season is a second business inside the first one
After a hurricane you can do a large share of the year’s revenue in a few weeks. Out-of-state crews arrive and have to be classified as 1099 or W-2 correctly, immediately. Equipment gets bought or rented under pressure. Insurance and municipal work bills out and then sits. The following spring brings a tax bill on money already spent. Books that pool storm work with ordinary operations cannot say which of the two businesses makes money. Until last September is separated from last March, you price both off one blended average.
Equipment costed as overhead hides the answer
Bucket truck, chipper, stump grinder, chip truck. Loans and depreciation are one part of it. The part that changes your bidding is a cost per hour, charged to the jobs the machine ran on. Leave the fleet in overhead and every removal looks more profitable than it is, and pruning worse.
What changes in your file
Payroll coded by the work, not the head count
Hours recorded against the classification the work belongs to, all year, so the split you claim at audit is the one your records already show. Checking that before the audit rather than after it is what payroll and 1099 filing is for.
Your four revenue types kept apart
Emergency removal, scheduled pruning, municipal and utility contracts, and land clearing as a sub to a GC carry four different margins and four different cash cycles. Most tree company books pool all four into one line. Municipal and utility work ages on its own, because steady and slow is a cash flow fact, not a collections failure.
Storm work in its own bucket
Tagged as it happens, so the season reads on its own and can be set against the tax it creates.
Equipment costed to the job
An hourly rate per machine, charged to the jobs it ran on, so removals and pruning compare on real numbers. Kept current through monthly bookkeeping rather than worked out once a year.
Crews classified before the season
1099-NEC or W-2 decided on how the work is actually controlled, W-9s collected up front.
Questions I get asked
Why is my workers’ comp bill so much bigger than other trades?
Because the classification your work sits in is one of the most expensive there is, and premium is calculated on payroll. What you control is the split. Ground work, yard time and landscaping-adjacent work do not automatically belong in the same code as climbing and removal. Coding those hours correctly all year is what makes the split hold at audit.
Should storm work be tracked separately from regular work?
Yes, and tagged while it happens rather than sorted out afterwards. A storm month has different crews, different equipment costs and a different collection timeline. Separated, you see what the season earned and what it owes in the spring.
How do I know whether removals or pruning make more money?
Not from the invoice totals. A removal ties up a bucket truck, a chipper and often a grinder for the day. Pruning uses a fraction of that. Until equipment time is charged to the job alongside labour, the bigger ticket looks like the better job by default.
Find out what the storm season and the equipment actually earned
Send me your QuickBooks file. I will tell you whether your payroll supports the class code split you are claiming, whether storm work can be pulled out of what is already recorded, and what it takes to cost equipment to the job.