Monthly bookkeeping
Monthly bookkeeping that tells you what the job made
Accounts reconciled, every transaction coded to the job it belongs to, and a P&L by job in your hands before the next month is half gone. Built for Florida subcontractors, not for small business generally.
A month-end P&L is the wrong report for a contractor
Your P&L says August was a good month. Fine. Which job carried it?
One pool of costs makes the month the smallest thing you can see
If every material invoice, every hour of labour and every sub payment lands in the same pool, the month is as far down as you can look. That is enough for a shop selling the same thing at the same price all day. You don’t run one. You run eight or twelve jobs a year that each priced differently, ran differently and finished differently, and the average across them tells you almost nothing about any one of them.
It costs you at bid time, which is the expensive place
You price the next job off a gut number built from a blended margin. One customer has been quietly eating four points of it for two years and the books have never once said so.
If you are already months behind, this is step two
Monthly bookkeeping keeps a file current. It does not catch one up. Books that are behind start with cleanup and catch-up, quoted as one flat number after a free look at the file, and then the monthly rhythm takes over.
What happens every month
Every account reconciled
Operating account, savings, every credit card, the fuel card and the supply house account. Not just the one the bank statement arrives for.
Transactions coded to the job
Materials, subs, equipment rental and labour go to the job as they happen, so job costs are current rather than reconstructed in February from memory and a shoebox.
A P&L by job, alongside the company P&L
Two reports. One tells you how the business did. The other tells you which work to stop bidding.
Retainage tracked separately from receivables
Money you earned, invoiced, and cannot collect yet. Folded into receivables it flatters your cash position right up until payroll.
1099 tracking through the year
Every sub who crosses the threshold is flagged as you pay them, with a W-9 on file. January becomes a filing instead of a search, which is the whole of payroll and 1099 work done in the right month.
Books closed on a fixed schedule
You get the same reports on the same days each month. Numbers that arrive in April cannot change a decision you made in February.
The part other packages put behind a higher tier
For a subcontractor, job costing is not a premium feature sitting on top of bookkeeping. It is the reason to keep books at all.
Bookkeeping without job costing is a bank balance you already know
Strip the job out and you are paying someone to tell you what your phone tells you for free. Plenty of packages are priced that way and they are a reasonable deal for a business that wants tidy records. They are the wrong shape for you.
So it is in the standard package
Every client gets the job-costed P&L. There is no tier where the report that decides next year’s bids is the upsell. See what that costs on the pricing page.
Questions I get asked
How fast do I get my reports?
On a fixed schedule each month, agreed at the start, so you can plan around it. The point of a schedule is that you know when the numbers land without having to ask for them.
Do I have to move off my current setup?
No. If you are on QuickBooks Online we work in the file you have. If you are on Desktop or spreadsheets, I will tell you straight whether a move is worth it, and mid-year it usually isn’t. If the file needs restructuring rather than replacing, that is setup.
What if my books are behind before we start?
Then monthly is step two. Cleanup comes first, quoted as a flat number after a free look at the file. See QuickBooks cleanup and catch-up.
Are you a CPA?
No. I am a QuickBooks Online Certified ProAdvisor. I keep the books accurate and job-costed so your CPA can file from them without rebuilding the year. Anything that needs a CPA’s signature goes to a CPA, and I will say so rather than stretch.
Find out what your jobs actually made
Send me the file. I will tell you whether job costing can be rebuilt from what is already in there, which it usually can, and what the monthly rhythm would look like from next month.