By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Here's the brutal reality of running a construction business: most contractors think they know which jobs made money. Most contractors are wrong. The job that felt great on the punch list — finished on time, happy customer, paid on time — often turns out to have lost margin once the final supplier invoices came in. The jo

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Most contractors lose money on jobs they thought were profitable. The root cause is rarely material price spikes, labor overruns, or scope creep alone — it's that the firm's construction cost codes don't tell them the truth about where the money is going. Without a properly structured cost code list, every job's actual pr

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com If you've been reading our 2026 construction bookkeeping series — Cost Codes (Blog #1) → [link to: /post/construction-cost-codes-2026-guide], Job Costing Reports (Blog #2) → [link to: /post/construction-job-costing-reports-2026-guide], and WIP Reports (Blog #3) → [link to: /post/construction-wip-reports-2026-guide] — th

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Houston is the #1 metro in the United States for construction job growth right now. Between February 2025 and February 2026, the Houston area added 11,200 construction jobs — the most of any US metro per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total construction starts in the region are forecast to grow 6% in 2026 after a 3% decl

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Public works construction is one of the few sectors in the United States with an expanding pipeline in 2026. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act have flooded the market with federally funded projects — and federally funded means certified payroll reporting under the

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com If you are evaluating sage 100 contractor for your construction firm in 2026 — or already running it and wondering whether it is delivering — this review is for you. The software has been the gold standard for small-to-mid-size construction accounting for two decades, but the construction software landscape has changed su

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Construction Bookkeeping Specialist | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 889-3283 | constructioncostaccounting.com Construction is one of the few industries where the difference between a profitable year and a losing one comes down to the books. Not the bidding, not the field execution, not the customer relationships — the books. A contractor with strong field operations but weak construction accounting routinely underbids jobs, misse

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | (949) 889-3283 Most construction contractors know their direct costs — materials, labor, subcontractors, equipment rental on a specific job. The number they often do not know with the same precision is their overhead: the cost of keeping the business running regardless of which projects are active. Construction overhead costs are the indirect expenses that must be recovered across every job you complete —

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | (949) 889-3283 Disclaimer: Construction Cost Accounting is a bookkeeping firm, not a CPA firm or law firm. The information in this post reflects general bookkeeping practices used in the construction industry and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute accounting, tax, or legal advice. Readers should consult a licensed CPA or attorney for guidance specific to their situation. Th

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 482-2790 | constructioncostaccounting.com The Procore QuickBooks integration is what turns two separate systems — a project management platform and an accounting platform — into a single connected financial workflow. Done right, it eliminates the double entry that plagues most construction firms: budgets, commitments, and change orders are built once in Procore and flow automatically into QuickBooks,

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | (949) 889-3283 Bookkeeping for construction companies is not the same as bookkeeping for a retail store, a law firm, or a marketing agency. The construction industry has accounting requirements that simply do not exist in other businesses — job costing that tracks every dollar to a specific project and cost code, WIP schedules that calculate overbilling and underbilling across every active job, retainage a

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 482-2790 | constructioncostaccounting.com A successful Procore project setup is one of the highest-leverage hours you will spend on any construction job. Because Procore's tools are deeply interconnected, the quality of your initial setup determines how well every downstream tool — punch lists, RFIs, submittals, change orders — functions for the entire life of the project. Get the foundation right, a

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | (949) 889-3283 Disclaimer: Construction Cost Accounting is a bookkeeping firm, not a CPA firm or law firm. The information in this post reflects general bookkeeping practices used in the construction industry and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute accounting, tax, or legal advice. Readers should consult a licensed CPA or attorney for guidance specific to their situation. As

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | (949) 889-3283 Job costing is the most important accounting method in construction — and the one most often done wrong. When job costing is set up correctly and maintained monthly, a contractor knows exactly how much every active project has cost to date, how that compares to the original budget, and what the projected margin is at completion. When it is not set up correctly, a contractor knows their bank

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting | calendly.com/tammycca/30min Procore Estimating is one of the most widely used construction estimating software platforms in the industry. It is designed to take a contractor from uploaded project plans all the way through digital takeoff, cost database integration, proposal generation, and direct budget transfer — entirely within a single cloud-based environment. For contractors who use Procore across the

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 482-2790 | constructioncostaccounting.com The Procore invoicing process is one of the most-used workflows in the platform — and for good reason. It connects subcontractors and project managers around the most consequential moment of any construction project: who gets paid, how much, and when. Done correctly, the system eliminates email chains, prevents lost payment applications, creates a complete au

By Tammy Hoang, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting (949) 482-2790 | constructioncostaccounting.com Procore is the construction management platform most large general contractors in the United States already use. Companies like Skanska, Turner, and Suffolk run billions of dollars in construction volume through it, and the platform now reports more than 2 million projects globally. For mid-size and growing construction firms evaluating construction project m