Shea Business Solutions does bookkeeping for construction companies and contractors across Orlando, FL, built around the one thing that decides whether a builder makes money: job costing. Handled in QuickBooks Online by a Level 2 ProAdvisor who answers the same business day, with pricing quoted flat before any work starts. If your profit and loss says you are doing fine but your bank account disagrees, the problem is usually in how the jobs are costed.
Contractors break their books in a specific place. Materials, labor, and subcontractor costs get dumped into general expense buckets instead of tied to the job that incurred them. The result is a company-wide profit number that hides which projects made money and which quietly lost it. A single unprofitable job can hide behind two good ones for a whole quarter. Fixing that is the core of construction bookkeeping.
Job Costing and Cost of Goods Sold Done Correctly
Real job costing means every dollar of material, labor, and subcontractor expense is allocated to the project it belongs to, and cost of goods sold is tracked so each job shows its true margin. We build the chart of accounts and item list in QuickBooks Online so costs flow to jobs automatically, not through a monthly guessing exercise. Once that is in place, you can look at a finished project and know exactly what it earned, and look at an active one and catch an overrun while there is still time to act.
Payroll, Audits, and the Classification Trap
Construction carries payroll risk that other trades do not. Worker classification, prevailing-wage situations, and the mix of employees and subcontractors all create exposure, and the state does check. One Orlando commercial painting contractor came to us two years behind on reconciliations, with personal and business expenses mixed together, and facing a state payroll audit. We reconstructed 24 months of bookkeeping, separated the personal draws, corrected the payroll tax classifications, and prepared tax-ready financials. They passed the audit with zero penalties, and the cleanup uncovered $14,500 in missed tax deductions along the way.
That contractor is why we pair construction bookkeeping with payroll services whenever there is a crew involved. Classification handled right at setup is far cheaper than classification corrected under audit.
Behind or Messy? Start With a Cleanup
A lot of contractors reach us with a file that has not reconciled in a year and a chart of accounts nobody has looked at since the business started. That is normal, and it is fixable. We reconcile every open month, allocate the historical costs back to jobs where the records allow, and rebuild the account structure so future jobs cost correctly. If you are months or years behind, that first step is catch-up bookkeeping, quoted flat after a free review. If the QuickBooks file itself was built wrong, it becomes a QuickBooks ProAdvisor job to rebuild it.
What Ongoing Construction Bookkeeping Includes
- Job-costed transactions. Materials, labor, and subs tied to the correct project every month, not lumped into overhead.
- Reconciliations. Bank and credit card accounts reconciled monthly so the numbers are real, not estimated.
- Per-project reporting. Profit and loss by job alongside the company P&L and balance sheet, so you see both the whole and the parts.
- Same-business-day answers. A question about a job cost gets answered the same day, not the following week.
Monthly bookkeeping starts at $200 and scales with volume. Cleanups, catch-up, and QuickBooks rebuilds are quoted flat after a free assessment. Nothing runs on an open-ended hourly meter.
When the P&L Says Profit and the Bank Says No
This is the complaint we hear most from contractors, and it almost always traces to two things: retainage and timing. Money held back on a project shows differently than money in hand, and a deposit collected this month against work billed last month makes a single month look better or worse than the business actually did. Books that ignore this produce a profit number that feels disconnected from the checking account, because it is. We set the file up so revenue and costs land in the periods they belong to and so retention and deposits are visible rather than buried, which is what makes a job-cost report worth reading. When a contractor can see that the profitable-looking job was carrying an unbilled overrun, they can price the next one to cover it instead of finding out at tax time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you set up job costing in QuickBooks for contractors?
Yes. We build the chart of accounts and item list so materials, labor, and subcontractor costs allocate to the correct job, and cost of goods sold tracks per project, giving you honest margins on every build.
Can you help a construction business facing a payroll audit?
Yes. We have reconstructed multi-year books and corrected payroll tax classifications for a contractor facing a state payroll audit, who passed with zero penalties. We prepare tax-ready financials and coordinate payroll compliance.
How much does construction bookkeeping cost?
Monthly bookkeeping starts at $200 per month and scales with transaction volume. Cleanups and catch-up projects are quoted flat after a free review, with no hourly billing.
My books are two years behind. Is that too far?
No. We regularly reconstruct multi-year contractor files, reconciling every open month and allocating costs back to jobs, until the books are current and tax-ready.
Do you work with subcontractors and 1099 filings for contractors?
Yes. We set up your subcontractors correctly, keep the W-9 and payment records in order through the year, and issue clean 1099s at year-end, so subcontractor reporting is never a January scramble. We serve contractors across Orlando and Central Florida, including Winter Park, Windermere, and Lake Nona.