Guides for contractors
Most bookkeeping advice online is written for businesses that sell a thing and get paid for it. Contractors get paid before, during and long after the work, and the books have to be built around that. These guides are.
They are arranged roughly in the order a contractor needs them. If you are working out whether anything is wrong, start with why contractor books go wrong. If you know something is wrong and want to fix the structure yourself, start with the QuickBooks setup and job costing guides. If you want to know what hiring this out costs before you read anything else, start with the cost guide.
Construction Accounting 101 for a Small Contractor
The handful of ideas that make construction accounting different: job costing, percentage of completion, over- and under-billing, retainage, committed costs and the WIP schedule. Written for an owner, not an accountant.
QuickBooks for Contractors: A Setup That Does Not Fall Apart
Which QuickBooks to use for a contracting business, how to structure the chart of accounts and cost codes, what to connect and what not to, and the setup mistakes that produce a cleanup a year later.
Job Costing in QuickBooks Online, Step by Step
How to set up job costing in QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced: Projects as jobs, items as cost codes, time and bills posted to jobs, burdened labour, and the reports to run each month.
Progress Billing, Retainage and Deposits: Where Contractor Cash Goes
Why a profitable contractor runs out of cash: deposits that are not income, progress bills that lag the work, retainage you cannot spend, and pay-when-paid subs. How the books should carry each.
1099 Subs or W-2 Crew? What It Changes in the Books
What separates a subcontractor from an employee, what each costs, what the books have to carry for each (W-9s, 1099-NECs at the new $2,000 threshold, payroll, workers’ comp) and why misclassification is expensive.
What Construction Bookkeeping Costs (2026)
What contractors actually pay for monthly bookkeeping, payroll and a cleanup: the ranges, what moves a company from one end to the other, and how a catch-up is quoted as deposit, retainer, then monthly.
Certified Payroll and Davis-Bacon, Explained for Small Contractors
What certified payroll is, when Davis-Bacon and state prevailing-wage rules apply, what the weekly reports contain, what it costs to get wrong, and how it fits alongside ordinary contractor bookkeeping.
Why Contractor Books Go Wrong: Deposits, Materials and Owner Draws
The seven errors found in most contractor bookkeeping files, how to recognise each from the reports, and which ones a tax preparer will catch versus which ones quietly cost money for years.
Reading because something in the books does not add up? The quickest way to find out whether it is the setup, the data or the business is to have someone who does this all day look at it. The first conversation is free.
Request a quote
Tell us about the company and the state of the books. Your bookkeeper replies within one business day with a plain answer: what it would take, and what it would cost. Requests answered within one business day · Calls Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm Eastern Or call (888) 720-4009 if you would rather talk it through first.
Where to start, depending on your situation
The guides answer different questions and the titles do not always make it obvious which applies to you, so here is the short version.
The P&L says profit and the bank says otherwise
Read why contractor books go wrong, then the progress billing guide. Nine times in ten the gap is deposits booked as income, change orders never billed, or retainage sitting in receivables.
You want to see profit by job
Read construction accounting 101 for the vocabulary, then job costing in QuickBooks Online for the mechanics. Neither assumes you know what a cost code is.
A bank or bonding agent has asked for a WIP schedule
Construction accounting 101 explains what it is and why they want it. If you need one by a date, that is a request rather than a guide.
You pay people and are not sure you are paying them right
The 1099 versus W-2 guide covers classification and what it changes in the books. The certified payroll guide covers the public-works case.
You want to know what this costs
The cost guide gives the ranges, what moves a company from one end to the other, and how a cleanup is quoted: deposit, retainer, then monthly.