By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Concrete is one of the most unforgiving trades to run the books for. Your margins are thin, your material costs move with the market, a short load or an over-pour eats your profit on the spot, and if you touch public work you're likely dealing with prevailing wage on top. Concrete contractor bookkeeping isn't generic book

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com If you build homes, your books have a job that a general contractor's don't: tracking a project from raw land through lots, construction, and sale — often with customer deposits, construction loans, and multiple homes moving at once. That's why many builders use the NAHB chart of accounts — a standardized account structur

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Every year it's the same scramble: tax season arrives, your CPA asks for documents, and you realize the books aren't ready. Receipts are missing, accounts haven't been reconciled in months, and nobody's sure if the job numbers are right. It's stressful, it's expensive in CPA cleanup fees, and it's completely avoidable. Go

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Bad bookkeeping rarely sends you a bill. There's no invoice that says "lost this bid because your job costs were wrong" or "declined for bonding because your WIP didn't reconcile." That's exactly why bad construction bookkeeping is so dangerous — the cost is real, ongoing, and almost completely invisible until it shows up

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Before you hire anyone to handle your books, three fair questions deserve straight answers: what do I actually get each month, do they understand my kind of construction business, and how long before I'm up and running? This is the gut-check guide. If you're weighing whether a construction bookkeeper is right for you, t

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Once a contractor decides their books need real help, the questions get practical fast: what does this cost, am I going to get a surprise invoice, what about cleaning up the mess I already have, and will any of this actually help me get bonded? This guide answers those four head-on. We won't dodge the money question — but

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com If you run a construction business, you've probably wondered whether the financial side really needs to be different from any other company's. It does — and the gap is bigger than most owners realize. Construction bookkeeping isn't regular bookkeeping with a hard hat on. It tracks money in a fundamentally different way, b

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Every electrical contractor is running a small warehouse on wheels and most don't think of it that way. Each truck is carrying thousands of dollars in wire, breakers, devices, conduit, fittings, and fixtures. Multiply that across a fleet and you've got serious money rolling around the county every day. Yet electrician inv

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Ask any electrical contractor what they'd most like to have, and somewhere near the top is this: revenue they can count on every month without chasing the next service call. That's exactly what an electrical service agreement delivers — a customer who pays you on a schedule to keep their electrical systems maintained, ins

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Electrical work runs on permits and inspections more than almost any other trade. Pull the panel, you need a permit. Add circuits, run a new service, do a tenant improvement — permit, then inspection, sometimes several. It's a constant, unavoidable part of the business. And yet electrical permit cost tracking is one of th

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Here's something that makes electrical contractor payroll genuinely different from payroll in most businesses: your crew isn't one kind of worker at one rate. You've got apprentices learning the trade, journeymen running independently, and foremen or masters leading the job — three tiers, three very different costs, and t

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Here's the problem with most electrical contractor bookkeeping: it treats an electrical business like one company, when really you're running two. You've got service work — the calls, the repairs, the panel swaps, the troubleshooting that keeps the phone ringing — and you've got project work — the new construction, the co