PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT.
Equipment accounting has three separate questions, and most contractors answer only the first. Capitalize or expense decides whether a purchase becomes an asset on the balance sheet or a cost against this month's profit. Depreciation then spreads that asset's cost across the years it works. It's a book entry, and no cash goes out. The third question decides margin: does any of that cost ever reach a job through an ownership rate. A machine you already own can cost a job nothing on the report while it costs the company several hundred dollars a day. That failure is in the job costing.
This stays broken because the accounting treatment and the job costing treatment belong to different people. Your CPA needs the asset on the balance sheet and the depreciation on the return, and that work is theirs. Your estimator needs an hourly or daily rate covering ownership so the bid doesn't give the iron away. Neither one produces the other. If you assume the tax return took care of it, you'll bid the next job with an equipment cost of zero. Everything on this page is accounting and job costing treatment. The elections, the schedule, and the tax outcome are your CPA's call.
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WHAT IT MEANS.
Property, plant and equipment is the long lived assets a contractor owns and uses to produce work. They are recorded on the balance sheet at what was paid for them and written down across the years they're used. They are not expensed in the month they were bought.
A written capitalization policy keeps the decision consistent. It sets a dollar threshold and an expectation of useful life. A small tool is expensed and a machine is capitalized, and nobody decides case by case when the invoice comes in. Set the threshold with your CPA, because it interacts with the return. Then write it down so your bookkeeper isn't making the call alone. Repairs that keep a machine working are expenses. Work that extends its life or adds capability is usually capitalized as an improvement. Agree on that line in advance, before an audit.
PP&E also changes the statement an outsider reads. Expensing everything understates the assets, which understates equity. Equity is one of the two figures a surety and a bank use to size a program. Capitalizing everything and never reviewing the schedule leaves machines on the books that were sold or scrapped years ago, which overstates it. Neither reads well. The fix for both is a fixed asset schedule that gets updated more than once a year.
THREE WAYS EQUIPMENT GOES WRONG.
Everything gets expensed, so the balance sheet understates the company
A machine bought and expensed through the profit and loss in the month of purchase distorts that month's result and leaves nothing on the balance sheet afterward. Equity reads lower than the business is worth, and equity is one of the two figures a surety uses to size a bonding program. The purchase was fine. How it was recorded cost you bonding capacity you didn't know you had given up.
Depreciation is treated as if it were money
Depreciation is an accounting entry that reduces reported profit without any cash leaving the building. A replacement reserve is cash set aside. They are two different things, and one doesn't create the other. If you read the depreciation line as a savings account, you find out at replacement time. The machine is worn out, and the money that supposedly covered it was distributed years ago.
Owned equipment costs the job nothing
Rented equipment reaches a job because an invoice forces it to. Owned equipment has no invoice. Unless an internal rate is charged, the job report shows a machine that worked at no cost. Ownership cost continues whether the iron works or is parked. It's roughly $200 a day for a CAT 330 that is idle, at industry idle rates near 30 percent. The bid gave that away and the job report will never say so.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Ownership cost continues whether a machine works or not. A parked CAT 330 excavator costs roughly $200 a day in ownership cost, and industry idle rates average around 30 percent. A bid built without an ownership rate gives that money to the project owner. No report will ever flag it as a loss, because the cost never posted to a job in the first place.
Take a machine expected to be replaced for $180,000 after five working seasons of 1,200 billable hours each. Spread the replacement across those 6,000 hours and it's $30 an hour of replacement recovery, before insurance, storage, interest, and maintenance are added on top. Every figure in that example is illustrative math, so don't use it as a benchmark. It calculates replacement recovery, which is a different thing from a depreciation schedule. The rate for your fleet comes from your own replacement costs and your own billable hours.
HOW IT GETS RECORDED AND CHARGED.
The policy is one threshold and one rule on repairs against improvements, written down and applied every time. The bookkeeper stops guessing and the CPA stops reclassifying at year end. The balance sheet stops moving for reasons that have nothing to do with the business. Because the threshold interacts with the return, your CPA sets it and we apply it.
Additions get recorded when they happen, and disposals get removed when the machine leaves. A bank and a surety read the asset side from this schedule. If it lists equipment that was sold two years ago, you'll have to explain that in an underwriting meeting, and it costs you credibility.
Each machine gets an hourly or daily rate covering depreciation, interest, insurance, storage, and a replacement component. That rate posts to the job that used it. Billed hours then get compared against the rate monthly. If a machine can't earn its rate, you now have the information to sell it.
We report them separately and we say which is which, every month. Depreciation belongs to the profit and loss and the tax return. The replacement reserve belongs to the balance sheet and the bank account, funded out of what each machine bills. The reserve is what buys the next machine.
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. We don't bill by the hour, and we don't do payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is in the table.
Built for subs doing $1M to $12M. Above $12.5M we quote.
| Last 12 months revenue | Core | Strategic | Platinum | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 | $3,100 | $3,300 | $2,500 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 | $4,100 | $5,300 | $4,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 | $5,900 | $8,300 | $6,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 | $7,600 | $11,800 | $7,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 | $8,900 | $14,900 | $9,000 |
| Above $12.5M | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted |
The onboarding fee covers migrating your books back to the start of your last taxable year and getting you fully operational in 60 days. It's billed once, with your first invoice. It's the same for all three tiers, and it moves with your revenue band. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
Just want the setup? Onboarding only is the same onboarding work with no monthly service after it, one time, at the onboarding fee plus $2,000. Start a monthly engagement later and $2,000 counts toward it. It starts at $4,500, and the price for every band is on the pricing page.
The three tier columns are the whole price. Which one fits depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
- Online software only: QuickBooks, Sage, Viewpoint and similar. No VPN or hosted desktop.
- Not in any tier: payroll, pay applications, collections on receivables.
- Pricing valid through 2027.
CFO work. Your own bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
We build your plan every month. Your team does the work.
You get the CFO work: job costing built to match the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, WIP every month, and a monthly meeting that ends with decisions.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Core, plus bookkeeping and bank reconciliations, plus job costing and WIP software set up and managed for you. Use your own online accounting software or we supply it, one price.
We build the plan, track it and adjust it every month.
We only work with trade subcontractors. We know what to look for, and we fix problems while they're still small. Everything in Core, plus the bookkeeping and bank reconciliations done for you, and the job costing and WIP software set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed every month. Use your own online software, or move to ours and we pay for it.
Our team does the bookkeeping and the reconciliations. We don't do payroll.
Strategic, plus a controller who handles payables and receivables the way an in-house controller would. You approve every payment.
We manage the money side for you, every week.
Everything in Strategic, plus our team does the controller work. We handle your bills and receivables the way an in-house controller would: we call vendors, pay the bills and keep the accounting current. We plan the cash flow first, and you approve every payment because it is your money.
Our team does the payables and receivables. We don't do payroll, pay applications or collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
