Plain-English guides on job costing, catch-up bookkeeping, 1099s, and getting your field-service tools to match QuickBooks. Written for contractors, not accountants.
A generic QuickBooks chart of accounts hides your job profit and makes overhead look like direct cost. Here is how to build a trade-native structure that actually tells you where the money went.
Read articleCash basis and accrual basis accounting each paint a different picture of your contracting business. Learn what each method shows, where each one misleads, and how we set up clean books either way in QuickBooks Online.
Read articleA straight-talk guide for contractors weighing DIY bookkeeping against done-for-you monthly close. Learn the concrete signs it is time to stop going it alone.
Read articleBefore your tax pro can claim anything, your books have to capture it. Here is a plain-language guide to the expense categories contractors commonly miss and the bookkeeping habits that protect every dollar at tax time.
Read articleDIY QuickBooks, a categorization service, or a done-for-you trade bookkeeper? An honest comparison of the three ways contractors keep their books, and how to pick.
Read articleBehind on your books? Here is what a catch-up actually involves, how long it takes, and how to stay current once you are out of the hole.
Read articleA company-wide P&L tells you if the business made money. Job costing in QuickBooks tells you which jobs, crews, and customers actually drove that profit. Here is how to set it up.
Read articleYour Jobber or ServiceTitan total never matches your QuickBooks deposits. Here is why those numbers diverge and how to reconcile them so your revenue and job costs are trustworthy.
Read articleThe January 31 deadline is just the finish line. The real work is collecting W-9s before the first payment and tracking subcontractor payments all year. Here is the checklist.
Read articleTrade-native bookkeeping inside your own QuickBooks file, closed by the 15th.