CASH OR ACCRUAL, AND WHY IT DECIDES EVERYTHING.
Cash basis records the deposit. Accrual basis records the work. That one difference decides whether your books have accounts receivable and accounts payable at all. Without those two accounts, a P&L can only tell you what a month collected. It can't tell you what the month earned. Most subcontractors can't say which basis they're on. Usually a bookkeeper set it during software setup years ago, and the tax return may be filed on a different basis than the reports you read. Find out before you make another decision from a report. On cash basis a strong month and a good collection month look the same, and you can't have a WIP schedule at all. Which basis your return is filed on, and every rule attached to that, is your CPA's work.
If you don't know your basis, every conclusion you take from the report has the same error in it. Say you read a cash basis P&L in a month when two general contractors paid late. You see a loss on work that earned money, and you cut something. The report was telling you when the checks came in. Then you read a strong month that was really three collections in the same month, and you price the next bid off it. Both reports were correct for what they measure. They told you what you collected, and you needed to know what you earned.
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WHAT IT MEANS.
Accounting basis is the rule that decides when a transaction goes into your books. Cash basis records revenue when the deposit clears and cost when the payment leaves. Accrual basis records revenue when the work is earned and cost when it's incurred, whether or not any money has moved.
The basis and the revenue recognition method are two separate choices, and people confuse them all the time. The basis decides whether receivables and payables exist in the books. The method, meaning percentage of completion or completed contract, decides how a long contract's revenue gets spread across the periods it covers. You need accrual before you can even ask the second question. So settle the basis first. It's usually the last thing anybody checks.
Nothing here is a recommendation about your tax filing. Businesses commonly keep management books that support job costing and a WIP schedule while their return is filed on whatever basis their CPA determines applies to them. Both can be true at once. The trouble starts when you manage the business off whichever set of numbers somebody printed most recently.
WHAT THE BASIS DOES TO THE REPORT.
Nobody in the business can say which basis the books are on
It gets set once during software setup and nobody looks at it again. The person who set it is often gone. You can tell from the balance sheet. If accounts receivable and accounts payable have no balances, or if they only appear once a year at the CPA's adjustment, the operating books are kept on cash. That's a five minute check nobody does, and the basis governs every other number in the file.
A cash basis P&L reports collections and calls it profit
On cash basis, a month where two general contractors paid on time looks profitable. A month where both paid late looks like a loss. Your crews did the same work in both. Worse, the report improves if you stop paying vendors, because an unpaid bill stays out of the books until the check goes out. You can't manage from a number that gets better when you do something harmful, whatever else it's useful for.
Job costing and WIP can't be built on it
A WIP schedule compares cost incurred to date against revenue earned to date, and cash basis records neither of those. Job costing has the same problem. A material invoice received in March and paid in May puts the cost in the wrong month, on a job that may already be closed. So you can't use the two tools that tell you whether the work is earning. The cause is the basis, so new software won't fix it.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take one month where the crews bill $400,000 of completed work and collect $180,000 of older invoices. Cost incurred that month is $310,000, of which $250,000 got paid. On cash basis the month reports $180,000 of revenue against $250,000 of cost, which is a $70,000 loss. On accrual it reports $400,000 against $310,000, which is $90,000 of profit. Same crews, same jobs, same month, and the two reports are $160,000 apart.
Take that same month and hold $60,000 of vendor payments until the first week of the following month. Cash basis cost falls to $190,000, and the reported loss becomes a $10,000 loss. That's an improvement of $60,000, and no job, hour or price changed. Accrual doesn't move at all, because the cost was incurred either way. That's why accrual is the basis to manage from.
WHAT WE SETTLE IN THE FIRST MONTH.
The first read of the books answers it. It shows whether receivables and payables hold balances every month or appear once at year end, whether vendor invoices are entered when received or when paid, and whether the reports you read agree with the return that got filed. Most owners have never been told the answer in a sentence. It goes in writing, so the next conversation starts from a fact.
Job costing, the WIP schedule, the cost to complete, and the CEO report all require cost recorded when incurred and revenue recorded when earned, so the management books are built that way. What basis your return is filed on is your CPA's determination, and it doesn't change what your operating reports need. Where the two differ, the difference gets documented, so nobody argues about it every spring.
Accrual only works if invoices go in when they're sent and vendor bills go in when they're received, every month, inside the close. If you rebuild a year of receivables and payables all at once, you get a balance sheet that ties and monthly reports you never got to use. The habit is what gets delivered here, and the close date keeps it going.
The bridge between what your operating reports say and what the filed return says gets documented once and updated, so nobody spends March arguing about which number is real. Your CPA gets a clean accrual file to work from, and that's usually what they care about most. The questions that come back in the spring are then about the return.
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.
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