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Guide
Construction Accounting Made Stupid Simple
This guide breaks down construction accounting into five key terms and seven common mistakes that quietly shrink contractor margins. It is written for general contractors, subcontractors, and specialty trades who want to understand their numbers without wading through accountant-speak. Worksheets for job health and loaded labor help you apply the concepts immediately to a real open job. Walk away knowing how to read a WIP schedule, spot overbilling, and bid with your true labor cost.
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Download the PDFWhat’s inside
- Five plain-English terms (job costing, WIP schedule, percentage of completion, over/underbilling, retainage) that let you read any construction financial report
- Seven specific mistakes found on nearly every set of contractor books, including flying without a WIP schedule and bidding at the wage line instead of the loaded labor rate
- A worked example showing how to calculate percent complete, earned revenue, and whether a job is overbilled or underbilled
- A fill-in job health worksheet to run the numbers on one open job right now
- A loaded labor reality check that shows why the paycheck wage is only about two-thirds of what a worker truly costs
- Ten warning signs that your books need a construction specialist, with notes on which ones signal an immediate cash risk
- A plain explanation of year-round tax strategies available to contractors (cost segregation, 263A elections, depreciation timing) that a general CPA may never raise
Looking for more? Read our construction accounting insights or book a free call to talk through your numbers.