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 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) 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 Most construction contractors know what a loss looks like when it shows up at year-end — a job that ran over budget, margins that disappeared, a number their CPA presents in April that nobody saw coming. What most contractors do not know is that under GAAP, that loss should have been on the books the moment it became evident — not months later when the damage was done. This is t

By Tammy Hoang, CFMA, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting You found a bookkeeper who says they know Procore. They probably don't — not at the level your jobs require. Procore is not accounting software. It is a project management platform that connects to your accounting system. A bookkeeper who has clicked around in Procore's dashboard is not the same as one who has configured the ERP integration, mapped your cost codes, managed the accounting approver workf

By Tammy Hoang, CFMA, QuickBooks ProAdvisor | Construction Cost Accounting If your crews are managing jobs in Procore and your books are in Sage 100 Contractor or QuickBooks, you are probably entering the same data twice. Change orders go into Procore for the project manager and into Sage for the bookkeeper. Subcontractor invoices get processed in the field and re-entered in the office. Job costs sit in Sage until the monthly close — which means your project manager is making

You can finish a project on time, under budget, and still walk into your year-end review with audit findings that blindside you. It happens more than it should and it almost never traces back to how you managed the job. It traces back to how you tracked the costs. Under GAAP, most construction contracts require revenue to be recognized using the percentage-of-completion method. The formula is straightforward: divide costs incurred to date by your estimated total costs. That p

You did everything right. Solid estimate. Competitive bid. Contract signed. But six months in, the numbers tell a different story and your margin has quietly vanished. That gap between what you projected and what you're actually making is called profit fade and it's one of the most common, most preventable, and most expensive problems in construction finance. In this article, we'll walk you through a 5-stage framework to identify where your margins are leaking, what's causin

Service calls turn into cash drains when untracked hours and surprise parts eat your margins alive. The wrong job costing method, whether time & materials or fixed bid can hide 20-30% losses until jobs close, forcing you to chase payments or cut crew. Mastering these approaches isn't optional; it's how you turn reactive repairs into predictable profits while keeping clients happy and books balanced. The problem isn't just choosing between time & materials and fixed bid. It's

Nearly 60% of contractors don't accurately track job costs, leading to profit margins 15-25% lower than they should be. Unlike new construction, service work involves emergency calls, unpredictable repairs, and constantly changing conditions that make accurate job costing both critical and difficult. Your billing model, Time & Materials (T&M) or Fixed Bid fundamentally changes how you track costs, recognize revenue, and protect your margins. Get this wrong, and profits leak a

Three weeks into a project, the owner requests a design modification. Your crew is already on-site, materials are ordered, and the schedule is locked in. You verbally agree to make the change to keep the project moving, figuring you'll sort out the paperwork later. Fast forward to billing time, and suddenly there's a dispute about what was agreed to, how much it should cost, and whether you're even entitled to payment for the extra work. This scenario plays out on constructio