BEST ACCOUNTANT FOR CONCRETE CONTRACTORS?
The best accountant for a concrete contractor is one who codes cost to the pour and the crew, closes the books early enough to change a decision, and reads WIP by the yard. Keep a CPA for tax and compliance. Add a construction CFO when the question turns to cash and margin. SPM is that CFO for concrete subs doing $1M to $12M. It is not a CPA firm: nobody at SPM is a CPA, and SPM does no tax preparation, audit or review work.
A CPA answers what happened and files it. That is real work and a concrete company needs it done right. What it does not do is tell you which week the account runs short, or whether the small pour you priced last month will lose money on short-load fees. Those are forward questions built on job cost, and they need cost coded the way a pour is run in the field. Most concrete owners end up with a good CPA and nobody working the numbers in between.
WHAT IT MEANS.
The right accountant for a concrete contractor is one who books cost by the pour and the crew as well as by the month, and who knows where an accountant's work stops and a construction CFO's forward work starts.
Concrete is one of the few trades where a single day decides the margin on a job. Trucks are sequenced against a clock, the crew and finishers stand ready, and a slip turns into standby charges before anyone opens the books. An accountant who has never seen a pour posts those costs by date and vendor. The owner needs them by pour, by crew and by yard, because that is the level at which a bid gets won or lost.
So the useful question is not which accounting firm ranks first for concrete. It is who will set the books up to answer pour level questions, and who owns the forward work once the month closes. The sections below split that into what a general accountant misses, what to ask for, and what SPM covers.
WHAT A GENERALIST LEAVES OUT.
Cost is booked by the month, and a pour is a single day
A general ledger records ready-mix, labor and equipment against the month and the vendor. A pour needs them against the job, the crew type and the yard. Without that, cost per yard cannot be computed, and the bid can never be compared to what the pour cost. The books can be correct for tax and still useless for pricing the next slab.
Short loads and standby never get a line of their own
Orders under a full truck carry short-load fees of $40 to $60 per yard, which adds $200 to $400 to a small pour. Waiting trucks bill standby when a slip cascades. In a standard chart of accounts both disappear into materials or general expense, so the punch pours and closeout work that lose money look the same as the jobs that make it.
Profit is on the report and the cash is not in the account
Concrete spends at the pour and bills after it. The monthly profit and loss can show a good job while the account is overdrawn. The desperate fix is invoice factoring or a merchant cash advance, which turns a timing problem into a permanent margin loss. Someone has to forecast the weeks, not just report the months.
WHAT THE RIGHT PERSON DOES.
Form crew and finishing crew costs get separate codes, and every pour is its own cost event. That makes cost per yard and labor per yard numbers you read off the books, and it shows which crew or which job type is carrying the margin.
Whoever runs each job reviews cost to complete against the bid every week, so a pour that ran over is visible before the next one is priced. A monthly recap comes after the decision it should have informed.
The forecast is built from the pour calendar and the pay application dates, so the week the account runs short is known nine weeks ahead. That is the difference between drawing on a line of credit as a plan and drawing on it as an emergency.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing. No payroll. No add-ons.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Your office stops answering coding questions and stops chasing a reconciliation on the last day of the month.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the books, the job costing, and the software. No payroll.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
