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Bank and card reconciliation
Every bank account and credit card reconciled monthly so your cash position is accurate, duplicates are caught, and nothing slips through uncategorized.
Buildertrend tracks your builds beautifully. It does not reconcile your bank, categorize your spend, or hand you tax-ready financials. That is the gap we close. FinTruction keeps your books clean and your job costs accurate, so the numbers in Buildertrend and the numbers in QuickBooks finally tell the same story.
Most custom home builders and remodelers we work with are running Buildertrend well. Estimates go out, change orders get logged, clients approve selections, subs submit pay apps through the portal, and the schedule moves. Then the month ends, and the accounting side is a mess: transactions sit uncategorized in QuickBooks, the bank has not been reconciled in three weeks, and the job-cost reports in Buildertrend do not agree with what QuickBooks actually shows.
That is not a Buildertrend problem. Buildertrend is a project management platform. It is purpose-built to run the build, not to serve as your general ledger. When data flows from Buildertrend into QuickBooks through the native sync, it still needs a knowledgeable bookkeeper on the other end to catch miscategorized transactions, resolve sync errors, post payroll to the right jobs, track retainage payable, and close the books each month.
The drift happens in predictable places. Buildertrend purchase orders reflect committed costs. Your actual AP bills in QuickBooks reflect invoiced costs. If no one is reconciling the two, your job-cost reports show one number and your real spend shows another. Similarly, client payments may enter Buildertrend through the customer portal but show up in QuickBooks as a lump deposit, with merchant fees buried inside, unless someone breaks them out correctly.
Payroll is another gap. Buildertrend tracks which crew members are assigned to which job, but it does not post wages, employer taxes, workers compensation, or benefits to your QuickBooks job costs automatically. Without that allocation, every job looks more profitable than it actually is, because the people building it do not appear in the numbers.
FinTruction owns the bookkeeping layer that sits behind Buildertrend. We keep the day-to-day books current, make sure every cost lands on the right job and cost code, and reconcile Buildertrend against QuickBooks so your reporting reflects reality.
Generic bookkeepers follow a generic close checklist. Construction bookkeeping for a Buildertrend builder is more involved, and the order of operations matters. Here is what a clean monthly close actually looks like.
Every transaction that hits your bank accounts and credit cards gets reviewed, categorized to the correct expense type, and coded to the correct job. For a builder with 5 to 20 active jobs, this means each lumber delivery, supplier payment, fuel charge, and software subscription lands in the right place in QuickBooks before anything else happens.
Every account gets reconciled to the statement balance, line by line. Reconciliation catches duplicates from the Buildertrend-QuickBooks sync, missing transactions, and errors before they compound month over month. A builder who skips reconciliation for three months typically finds discrepancies that take days to untangle.
Outstanding vendor bills and subcontractor pay applications are entered as AP in QuickBooks against the correct job and cost code. Retainage withheld from subs is posted separately to a retainage payable account rather than hitting job costs immediately, so your job-cost reports do not overstate what you have paid out. When retainage is released at substantial completion, it moves from the holding account to AP and then to cash. This discipline keeps your committed-cost picture accurate throughout the job.
Client invoices and progress billings are matched to payments received. Payments that came through the Buildertrend customer portal are reconciled to bank deposits, and any merchant processing fees are posted to the correct expense account rather than netting against income. Deposits held at the start of a job are tracked as liabilities until earned. AR aging shows you what is outstanding and for how long.
Payroll is posted and then allocated across jobs based on time entries or job assignments. Labor burden, meaning employer payroll taxes, workers compensation premiums, and any benefits the company contributes, is calculated and added to the job cost for each employee. Without this step, your job-cost reports only show what you paid subs and suppliers, and they systematically understate the true cost of every job you build with your own crew.
We cross-check QuickBooks job costs against Buildertrend budget categories. If the two systems diverge, we trace the difference and correct it before issuing the month-end reports. This tie-out is what makes your budget-vs-actual numbers trustworthy. For a deeper look at Buildertrend job costing, including cost-to-complete calculations and variance analysis, see our dedicated page.
The close finishes with a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, and a job-profitability summary. These are not auto-generated reports pulled straight from QuickBooks without review. They are reviewed for anomalies, compared to prior periods, and sent to you with a short plain-English summary of what the numbers mean so you can actually use them.
Trusted by 25+ Construction Businesses
A standard small-business chart of accounts does not work for a construction company. When your bookkeeper sets up QuickBooks using a generic template, you end up with a flat expense list that tells you almost nothing about where money went on which job. A builder needs a cost-code structure that mirrors the way construction work is actually organized.
The key difference is the addition of job-cost expense accounts organized by cost category, separate from overhead. Job costs are direct costs that belong on a specific project. Overhead costs, like your office rent, software subscriptions, and vehicle insurance, are company costs that do not belong on any individual job.
Buildertrend uses its own category structure inside estimates and budgets. When the integration syncs data to QuickBooks, each Buildertrend category needs a corresponding QuickBooks class or job-cost code so the costs land in the right bucket. Without this mapping, everything defaults to a generic account and your job-cost reports become useless.
We build the mapping table during onboarding and maintain it as you add new cost categories in Buildertrend. If you work with the QuickBooks-Buildertrend integration and have not set up this mapping, your job costs are almost certainly distorted. The fix is straightforward but requires someone who knows both systems.
A complete bookkeeping function built around how Buildertrend builders actually operate.
Every bank account and credit card reconciled monthly so your cash position is accurate, duplicates are caught, and nothing slips through uncategorized.
Buildertrend cost categories mapped to QuickBooks cost codes and reconciled monthly so your budget-vs-actual numbers reflect what was actually spent on each job.
Vendor bills, subcontractor pay applications, and retainage payable tracked and coded to the correct job and cost category until released at project close.
Client invoices and Buildertrend portal payments matched to bank deposits, merchant fees posted separately, and AR aging maintained so you know who owes what.
Payroll posted and crew wages plus employer taxes, workers comp, and benefits allocated to the jobs where your people actually worked.
A clean close with profit and loss, balance sheet, job-profitability summary, AP and AR aging, retainage schedule, and a plain-English summary delivered on a reliable schedule.
One of the most consequential numbers in a construction business is the gap between what you have earned on a job and what you have billed. When you have billed more than you have earned, you are over-billed. That liability will come due as the work catches up. When you have billed less than you have earned, you are under-billed, and you are essentially financing the project out of your own cash.
A work-in-progress schedule, or WIP schedule, is the tool builders use to track this across all active jobs simultaneously. It requires accurate job costs and accurate billing records to produce meaningful numbers. If your books are not reconciled and your job costs are not coded correctly, your WIP schedule will show you a distorted picture, and you will not know whether your business is cash-positive or cash-negative on jobs in progress.
Clean bookkeeping is the foundation that makes a WIP schedule work. Once the books are accurate, the WIP becomes a genuine management tool rather than a compliance exercise. For a full walkthrough of how to read and use a WIP schedule, see our guide: What Is a WIP Report?. For the job-costing mechanics that feed it, see Buildertrend Job Costing Done Right.
Trusted by 25+ Construction Businesses
Builders often underestimate the financial cost of poor bookkeeping because the damage is invisible until it is not. Here is where the losses show up.
When AR is not tracked carefully, builders routinely fail to issue draw requests on time or miss change order billings entirely. Underbilling on a single large job can tie up tens of thousands of dollars in cash for weeks or months. Multiply that across three or four active jobs and you have a liquidity problem that feels like a revenue problem.
Builders bid their next job based on what the last job cost. If your job costs are missing labor burden, miscoded expenses, or untracked subcontractor retainage, your cost history is wrong. You will bid too low, win the job, and wonder why you are working hard and not getting ahead.
When income and expenses are not categorized correctly throughout the year, your tax preparer is working from inaccurate numbers. The result is often an unexpected tax bill in April because deductions were missed or income was overstated. Clean monthly books make tax season straightforward because the heavy lifting is already done.
If you ever want a bank line of credit, a construction loan, or a surety bond for a larger project, your lender or bonding company will ask for financial statements. Messy books that have never been formally closed produce financial statements that do not hold up to scrutiny. Builders who have kept clean books have a significant advantage when capital access matters.
Most builders who contact us are not starting from zero. They are somewhere in the middle: books that are three to six months behind, a cost-code structure that never got set up properly, QuickBooks accounts that do not match what Buildertrend is sending, and a nagging feeling that the numbers are not quite right.
Before we take over ongoing monthly bookkeeping, we do a thorough Audit of the existing books. We identify the gaps, reconcile outstanding accounts, recode miscategorized transactions, rebuild the chart of accounts and cost-code mapping if needed, and bring the books current. Only then do we hand off a clean foundation for the ongoing monthly close.
The length of a cleanup engagement depends on how far behind the books are and how many active jobs need to be reconstructed. We scope it clearly upfront so there are no surprises. Once cleanup is complete, the monthly engagement runs smoothly because the structure is right.
Most builders start by doing the books at night. Here is what changes when a Buildertrend-literate team owns it.
| DIY or General Bookkeeper | With FinTruction | |
|---|---|---|
| Bank reconciliation | When you remember, or never | Every month, on time |
| Buildertrend cost mapping | Default accounts, miscoded | Mapped to QuickBooks cost codes |
| Job cost accuracy | Materials only, no labor burden | Materials, labor, subs, equipment |
| Retainage tracking | Mixed into regular AP | Held separately by job, released on close |
| Buildertrend vs QuickBooks | Drift apart over months | Reconciled and in agreement |
| WIP and billing accuracy | Guesswork | Clean books feed an accurate WIP |
| Tax time | Scramble and catch-up fees | Books already closed, tax-ready |
| Your evenings | Spent in QuickBooks | Back to your family |
No mystery. You get the same reliable package every month, delivered on schedule.
Most builders are fully handed off and running clean within the first month.
We review your current QuickBooks file and Buildertrend setup. We look at the cost-code mapping, reconciliation status, chart of accounts, and any backlog. You get an honest picture of what is off and what it will take to fix it.
If the books are behind or the structure is wrong, we catch it up and rebuild the cost-code mapping so job costing works correctly going forward. We do not skip this step because ongoing bookkeeping only works when the foundation is solid.
We configure the integration so Buildertrend cost categories map to the right QuickBooks accounts and jobs. Change orders, purchase orders, and portal payments flow to the correct places without manual intervention.
We take over the full monthly close: categorization, reconciliation, AP and AR, payroll allocation, job-cost tie-out, and the reporting package. You stay informed and in control without doing the work yourself.
We work with custom home builders, remodelers, and residential general contractors typically running $500K to $15M in annual revenue with 3 to 30 active jobs. If you are using Buildertrend to run your projects and QuickBooks to run your finances, and the two are not telling the same story, you are the builder we designed this service for.
Our bookkeeping services for Buildertrend users are designed around the specific workflows builders use: progress billings, draw schedules, subcontractor pay applications, lien waivers, retainage, and cost-code job costing. A generalist bookkeeper who has never worked with a Buildertrend builder will spend months learning what we already know on day one.
FinTruction is based in Coppell, Texas, and works with Buildertrend builders across the United States. Everything is handled remotely through QuickBooks Online and Buildertrend, with clear communication and a reliable monthly cadence.
Talk to Us About Your BooksWe work inside QuickBooks. Buildertrend feeds the build data, including estimates, change orders, purchase orders, and customer payments. QuickBooks holds your actual books, including your general ledger, bank accounts, AP, AR, and financial statements. We keep both systems current and in agreement so your financials and job costs are accurate and tax-ready.
Yes. If your books are behind, we do a catch-up and cleanup first. That includes reconciling outstanding accounts, recoding miscategorized transactions, rebuilding your chart of accounts and cost-code structure, and bringing everything current. Only then do we hand off to the ongoing monthly service. The cleanup is scoped and priced separately so you know exactly what is involved.
We map Buildertrend cost categories to a clean QuickBooks cost-code structure, separated by cost type: materials, labor, subcontractors, equipment, and other direct costs. We reconcile the two systems monthly so your budget-vs-actual in both platforms reflects what was actually spent on each job. Labor burden, meaning employer taxes, workers comp, and benefits, is also allocated to jobs so your crew costs are visible in job costing.
Yes. Subcontractor pay applications are entered as AP bills in QuickBooks against the correct job and cost code. Retainage withheld from subs is tracked separately in a retainage payable account so it does not distort your job-cost expenses until it is actually released. When a job reaches substantial completion and retainage is paid out, we move it correctly through AP and to your bank.
A bookkeeper who understands Buildertrend knows how the integration with QuickBooks works and where it breaks down. They understand progress billings, draw schedules, committed costs from purchase orders, sub pay applications, and the job-cost mapping between the two platforms. A general bookkeeper will often miscategorize Buildertrend transactions, miss retainage, skip labor burden, and produce job-cost reports that look plausible but are wrong.
Our bookkeeping service focuses on keeping the books clean, accurate, and current every month. Tax preparation and higher-level financial advisory are handled by our sister service. See the Buildertrend Accountant page for details on tax strategy, entity structuring, and year-end planning on top of the bookkeeping.
We post your payroll runs and then allocate wages plus labor burden to the jobs where each employee worked, based on time records or job assignments from Buildertrend. Employer taxes, workers compensation, and any employee benefits the company contributes are included in the allocation. This ensures that your crew costs appear in job costing, not just on the P&L as an overhead number.
Every month you receive a clear reporting package: reconciled accounts, profit and loss, balance sheet, job-profitability report, AP and AR aging, retainage schedule, and a plain-English summary of what the numbers mean and anything worth your attention. You stay in control. We do the work so you can make good decisions from accurate data.
No. FinTruction is based in Coppell, Texas, and works with Buildertrend builders nationwide. All bookkeeping, QuickBooks access, and communication are handled remotely. Builders in California, Florida, Colorado, the Southeast, and everywhere in between work with us the same way as local clients.
We typically work best with builders running $500K to $15M in annual revenue with 3 to 30 active jobs. Smaller builders sometimes have simpler needs that do not require a full monthly engagement. Larger builders may need more horsepower. We are happy to talk through your situation and tell you honestly whether we are a good fit.
Most builders are fully handed off within the first month. If there is a significant backlog to clean up first, the cleanup phase adds time before the ongoing monthly service begins. We scope the cleanup clearly so you know upfront how long it will take and what it will cost.
The free review is a look at your current QuickBooks file and Buildertrend setup. We check your chart of accounts, cost-code mapping, reconciliation status, job-cost accuracy, AP and AR, and any obvious structural issues. You get an honest assessment of what is working, what is not, and what clean, job-costed books would look like for your business. No commitment required.
Real results from builders and contractors we have helped untangle their books and systems.
They didn’t just record transactions and call it a day. They built a custom chart of accounts around how a remodeling company actually runs, did a full catch-up on years of bookkeeping inside QuickBooks Online, and now stay on top of my monthly bookkeeping and payroll. Every step, they broke it down in simple terms instead of burying me in accountant talk.
FinTruction rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, work in progress, and retainage. They didn’t just hand me reports and disappear; they walked me through my numbers until I understood them.
Sahil and his team handle the bookkeeping and job costing for my painting business. They cleaned up my books and set up integrations that give me accurate, timely job costing with solid weekly data. Reliable, detailed, and genuinely invested in getting the numbers right.
FinTruction is the only bookkeeping team we’ve found that truly understands construction accounting and WIP reporting. They aligned our income and costs across 21 jobs and gave us full, monthly transparency. Fast, accurate, and an indispensable partner.
When I came to FinTruction I had no financial structure. No job costing, no WIP tracking, books behind. They did a full cleanup and rebuilt job costing and WIP tracking in QuickBooks. Now I know what’s billed, what’s owed, and where every job stands.
A couple of minutes from a contractor we support, sharing what working with FinTruction has been like and what changed once their numbers finally made sense.
Get a free Audit of your books. We will tell you exactly what is off and what clean, job-costed books would look like for your construction business.
