5.0 out of 5 based on 41 reviews
Construction Accounting Services
See where every job stands, what is driving margin, and where profit is leaking before it is too late.
★★★★★“Since adding Alex with Stronghold Accounting for our bookkeeping, it has truly been a Godsend for our business. Alex cleaned up a difficult QuickBooks transition and became a game changer for our month-to-month bookkeeping.”Patty LeslieTampa
★★★★★“I like that you're helping me strategize, not just giving me numbers. There were still blind spots that you've been able to uncover for me. I didn't think that was possible.”JoelService-business owner
★★★★★“Alex and his team helped bring the books current and continue to provide monthly support while helping plan for growth.”Dr. MaloneLake Mary
★★★★★“Alex is sharp, detail-oriented, and genuinely passionate about his work. He explains the numbers clearly and helps business owners gain more control over their finances.”Baxter McCoyOrlando
★★★★★“Since adding Alex with Stronghold Accounting for our bookkeeping, it has truly been a Godsend for our business. Alex cleaned up a difficult QuickBooks transition and became a game changer for our month-to-month bookkeeping.”Patty LeslieTampa
★★★★★“I like that you're helping me strategize, not just giving me numbers. There were still blind spots that you've been able to uncover for me. I didn't think that was possible.”JoelService-business owner
★★★★★“Alex and his team helped bring the books current and continue to provide monthly support while helping plan for growth.”Dr. MaloneLake Mary
★★★★★“Alex is sharp, detail-oriented, and genuinely passionate about his work. He explains the numbers clearly and helps business owners gain more control over their finances.”Baxter McCoyOrlando
★★★★★“Since adding Alex with Stronghold Accounting for our bookkeeping, it has truly been a Godsend for our business. Alex cleaned up a difficult QuickBooks transition and became a game changer for our month-to-month bookkeeping.”Patty LeslieTampa
★★★★★“I like that you're helping me strategize, not just giving me numbers. There were still blind spots that you've been able to uncover for me. I didn't think that was possible.”JoelService-business owner
★★★★★“Alex and his team helped bring the books current and continue to provide monthly support while helping plan for growth.”Dr. MaloneLake Mary
★★★★★“Alex is sharp, detail-oriented, and genuinely passionate about his work. He explains the numbers clearly and helps business owners gain more control over their finances.”Baxter McCoyOrlando
What makes construction accounting different
Job costing. Every other business measures profit by period. A contractor measures it by job, across periods, against an estimate made before the work started. Until costs are allocated to the right job, a profit and loss statement tells a contractor almost nothing useful.
Job costingConstruction bookkeeping services that stop at categorizing and reconciling leave the contractor exactly where they started: accurate books that cannot answer whether a job made money. Job costing is what turns one into the other, and it is the reason a construction accountant costs more than a general one.
The problems that only happen in construction
01Costs that never reach the jobMaterials bought for one project and used on another. A crew split across three sites in a week. Fuel, equipment hire and small tools charged to overhead because allocating them was too much work. Every unallocated dollar makes a bad job look average and an average job look good.
02Work in progress nobody is calculatingCosts incurred on jobs not yet billed are an asset. Bill in advance of the work and it is a liability. Contractors who ignore WIP see revenue lurch with the billing cycle rather than the build, which makes the P&L unreadable and a bonding application difficult.
03Retainage sitting in the wrong placeFive or ten percent held back on every invoice, sometimes for a year after the work is done. Recorded as revenue with no tracking of what is outstanding, it disappears from view, and contractors routinely leave real money uncollected.
04Change orders done on a handshakeThe work happens, the paperwork does not, and the cost lands in the job while the revenue never does. This is the most common reason a job that felt profitable was not.
05Florida lien deadlines missedUnder Florida’s construction lien law, a Notice to Owner generally has to be served within 45 days of first furnishing labor or materials, and a claim of lien recorded within 90 days of final furnishing. Miss the window and the security is gone. That is a records problem before it is a legal one, and it depends on knowing exactly when you first showed up on a site.
06Percentage-of-completion versus completed contractWhich method you use changes when profit appears and what you owe when. Many contractors are on the wrong one for their size or contract mix and have never been told.
What we handle for contractors
The problem
What we do
Job costing
Job costing set up so labor, materials, subcontractors and equipment land on the right job without anyone re-keying it
Work in progress
WIP schedules, with over and under billing calculated monthly
Retainage
Retainage tracked as a receivable, by job and by age, so nothing is quietly written off
Change orders
Change order tracking tied to the job it belongs to
Job profitability
Job profitability reporting, estimate against actual, on every project
Subcontractor compliance
Subcontractor compliance, including W-9 collection and 1099-NEC filing
Certified payroll
Certified-payroll support where the selected payroll platform can produce the required reporting; specialized prevailing-wage compliance may require coordination with the provider or a specialist.
Lien deadlines
Records structured around lien deadlines, so first and last furnishing dates are recoverable
Monthly close
CPA analysis of the monthly close
Construction benchmarks
20-35%+Target gross margin
8-15%+Target net margin
10-20%Target operating expenses
30-45 daysTarget receivables
Estimate vs actualMargin on significant jobs
MonthlyWIP reconciliation
Software we work in
QuickBooks Online for the general ledger, with experience in Buildertrend and PayAppHQ for construction workflows. The integration that matters is project management into the ledger. If job costs are being re-typed from one system into another, they will be wrong, and the reporting built on them will be worse than nothing.
How it works
STEP 1Job costing structure first. Before anything else, we set up how costs will be allocated. Retrofitting this later means recoding history.
STEP 2WIP baseline. Where the open jobs actually stand.
STEP 3Foundation Buildout, if prior periods lack job-level detail. The typical timeline is 2-4 weeks.
STEP 4Monthly close, with a job profitability report alongside the P&L and a WIP schedule.
Proof
$96,000Misclassified or misallocated costs identified, specialty contractor
2 yearsOf accounting activity rebuilt
What it costsConstruction bookkeeping services are priced above a comparable non-construction business because job costing and WIP add real work each month.
Pricing is custom and flat-rate. The quote reflects company size, industry, headcount, bank and credit-card accounts, locations, entity count, transaction volume, and any cleanup required.
Pricing is custom and flat-rate. The quote reflects company size, industry, headcount, bank and credit-card accounts, locations, entity count, transaction volume, and any cleanup required.
For a specialty contractor with about $4.2 million in annual revenue, Stronghold rebuilt two years of accounting activity, identified about $96,000 in misclassified or misallocated costs, and found a category of projects running roughly eight percentage points below target margin.Specialty contractor
Services contractors usually need
See more services for contractors
Common questions
Construction questions
Can you set up job costing in QuickBooks?
Yes, and doing it properly at the start is the single highest-value thing on this page. Retrofitting job costing onto twelve months of history is possible but expensive.
Do you produce WIP schedules for bonding or lending?
Yes, with over and under billing calculated monthly rather than pulled together when a surety asks.
How do you handle retainage?
Tracked as a receivable by job and by age, so you can see what is outstanding and how long it has been.
Do you handle certified payroll?
We can support certified-payroll accounting and reporting when the selected payroll platform supports the contract's requirements. Specialized prevailing-wage compliance may require a specialist.
Do you know Florida lien law deadlines?
We structure the records so the dates the deadlines depend on are recoverable. We are accountants rather than attorneys, and for the filing itself you want a construction attorney.
Should we be on percentage of completion or completed contract?
It depends on contract length, revenue size and your mix. It is worth reviewing rather than inheriting, and it is part of tax planning.
Do you work with subcontractors as well as general contractors?
Yes. The mechanics are the same and the retainage exposure is often worse.
Do you offer bookkeeping for contractors who only run small residential jobs?
Yes, though at low job volume the job costing setup matters less and the payroll and tax planning matter more. A construction accountant is worth the premium once job count is high enough that you cannot hold the numbers in your head.