Job costing, WIP and Davis-Bacon certified payroll for work inside a live airport
Badging is the part nobody budgets for. You win airside work at DFW International Airport, which sits partly inside Irving city limits, then wait while the crew clears fingerprinting and a security threat assessment, pay badged escorts for everyone who did not, and build the whole thing at night between the last arrival and the first departure. Then the federal grant money arrives with Davis-Bacon attached and weekly certified payroll on form WH-347. Construction accounting for Irving contractors means costing badging, escort hours and shift premiums to the job, and producing that payroll from the same run that feeds job cost.
On the ground
The Las Colinas canal walk, Irving, Texas
Irving is unusual among Texas cities because a large airport is partly inside it. Roughly six thousand acres of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport fall within Irving city limits, and the airport is governed by a board created jointly by the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth rather than by Irving. For a contractor that distinction is not trivia. It means the owner you contract with runs its own design standards, prequalification and access rules, and it means a meaningful share of the construction spend in your own city is federally assisted rather than private.
Aviation construction is a genuinely different product. Terminal work, cargo and freight facilities, hangars, apron and taxiway rehabilitation, airfield lighting, ground transport infrastructure and airport hotels all have to be built around live operations. Work windows open at night and close before the first departure, crews mobilize and demobilize repeatedly rather than once, and every person inside the secure area needs a badge obtained through a fingerprint-based criminal history records check and a security threat assessment. Anyone without one has to be escorted by somebody who has one, and that escort is paid labor doing no production.
The second Irving economy is corporate. Las Colinas, the master-planned district around Lake Carolyn and the canal walk, holds one of the densest concentrations of corporate headquarters in Texas, including Kimberly-Clark, Fluor, Caterpillar, McKesson and Commercial Metals, and the Mustangs of Las Colinas sculpture at Williams Square is the district landmark. Headquarters relocate in and out, and every move generates interior demolition, fit-out and re-tenanting work. Along State Highway 114, State Highway 183 and the President George Bush Turnpike, distribution and light industrial development follows the freight moving through the airport, and the DART Orange Line linking Las Colinas to the airport has pulled multifamily and mixed-use construction in behind it.
The practical consequence is that a single Irving contractor often runs a Davis-Bacon airfield contract, a private office fit-out on allowances, and a warehouse shell at the same time. Three billing methods, two payroll regimes and two entirely different documentation standards, in one accounting file. Systems that coped at four jobs stop telling the truth at twelve, and the first symptom is almost always the same: the profit and loss looks fine and the bank balance does not.
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.
Aviation construction carries cost categories that do not exist on an ordinary commercial job. Security badging, escort labor, movement area driver permits, repeated mobilization into short night windows and material staging outside the fence are all real money, and on most contractor books they end up in overhead where they cannot be recovered or bid. We give them cost codes and post them weekly, so job costing in Irving reflects what airfield work actually costs you.
Every construction platform claims to have a "QuickBooks integration." Most break the moment your books need to be accurate. Sales tax mismaps, retainage disappears, change orders create duplicates, and job costing reports stop matching project reality. We fix the integration so your software, your books, and your job‑level numbers all tell the same story.
Also work with Foundation, Sage 100, Bill.com, ADP, Gusto, Ramp, and more. See all platforms we integrate →
Federally funded airport work brings an obligation most Texas contractors have never carried. Airport Improvement Program projects require the applicable Davis-Bacon wage determination and weekly certified payroll, normally on Department of Labor form WH-347. The failure mode is always the same: the compliance filing is prepared in one place and the job cost report in another, and the two stop agreeing. Certified payroll in Texas only works when both come out of one payroll process.
Grant-funded aviation work is documented work. Airport sponsors receiving Federal Aviation Administration money operate a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program under 49 CFR Part 26 and set participation goals on contracts, and Buy American preferences apply to steel and manufactured products used on those projects. Both obligations are settled with records, and the records live in your accounting system. We set them up so a compliance request is answered from the ledger.
Terminal renovations, taxiway rehabilitation and multi-floor office fit-outs all run in phases, and phased work is where underbillings hide. An underbilling is money you have already spent and not yet asked for. We produce a monthly work in progress schedule comparing cost to date against the current estimate, calculate earned revenue on percentage of completion, and keep retainage receivable and payable out of ordinary receivables where it disappears.
Texas taxes construction in ways that catch out a general bookkeeper, and growth in Irving is limited by bonding capacity and working capital rather than by available work. Our construction tax planning, controller services and CFO services cover the franchise tax margin calculation, the sales tax treatment of your contracts, and the question of what size job you can actually carry.
Irving runs two construction economies at once. Federally funded aviation work carries Davis-Bacon wage rates, security access costs and grant reporting. Las Colinas and the highway corridors produce private office fit-out and logistics work on ordinary commercial terms. The accounting has to keep them apart.
A general bookkeeper can record transactions. Construction accounting is a different job.
| What you need | Generic local bookkeeper | FinTruction |
|---|---|---|
| Job-level costing | Lumps all jobs into one P&L | Cost codes and margin per project |
| WIP & revenue recognition | Cash-basis, no WIP schedule | Monthly WIP with over/underbilling |
| Retainage tracking | Buried in AR/AP, often missed | Tracked receivable & payable by contract |
| Bonding & lender packages | Not equipped to produce them | Bonding-ready statements and backlog |
| Construction software | QuickBooks set up like a retail shop | QuickBooks + integrations tuned for contractors |
We support contractors across Irving and the airport corridor, from airfield civil and electrical crews working inside the fence to interior and mechanical trades re-fitting corporate space in Las Colinas.
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Construction funded through the Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program carries Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage requirements by federal law, and contractors and subcontractors on those projects must pay the applicable wage determination and file weekly certified payroll, normally on Department of Labor form WH-347. This is the single most underestimated obligation for Texas contractors entering airport work, because Texas has no state prevailing wage on private construction and many firms have simply never produced a certified payroll before. The obligation follows the federal funding, not the geography.
Airport sponsors that receive Federal Aviation Administration funding must operate a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program under 49 CFR Part 26, and prime contractors report actual payments made to certified DBE firms against the contract goal. Separately, Buy American preferences apply to steel and manufactured products incorporated into AIP-funded projects, with a waiver process for exceptions. Both are settled with accounting records, so DBE subcontracts and qualifying material purchases should be flagged at commitment level rather than reconstructed at closeout.
Texas Government Code Chapter 2258 requires payment of prevailing wages on public works contracts of the state and its political subdivisions, with the rate determined by the awarding public body rather than by a statewide schedule. For an Irving contractor that reaches City of Irving projects, Dallas County work, Irving Independent School District bond construction and Dallas Area Rapid Transit contracts. The rate source differs from a Davis-Bacon determination, so a contractor working both needs the applicable rate recorded against each contract rather than assumed.
Texas issues no statewide general contractor license, which regularly surprises firms moving in from other states. Specific trades are licensed at state level: electricians and air conditioning and refrigeration contractors through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and plumbers through the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners. On top of that the City of Irving runs its own permitting and inspection process, and work on airport property adds owner prequalification, security badging and movement area driver training. Those access costs are job costs and belong on the job.
The Texas treatment turns on contract type. Under a lump-sum contract the contractor is generally the consumer of the materials and pays tax on purchases; under a separated contract, with materials and labor stated separately, tax is generally collected from the customer on the materials. Labor to repair or remodel nonresidential real property is generally taxable, while labor for new construction is not, which bites hard in Irving where re-tenanting and fit-out work is constant. The combined rate in Irving is 8.25 percent. Note also that Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is the grantee of Foreign-Trade Zone No. 39, so imported materials moving through a zone site raise customs questions we flag for a specialist rather than answer ourselves.
Texas levies no personal income tax, but most entities file a franchise tax report calculated on taxable margin. Construction companies can generally elect the cost of goods sold deduction, which treats direct job costs including labor, materials and subcontracted work relatively favorably. The deduction is only as strong as the records behind it. Contractors whose direct costs sit undifferentiated in general overhead routinely understate the deduction and pay more than they owe, which is a bookkeeping failure with a tax price attached.
Texas Property Code Chapter 53 governs mechanic lien rights and runs on strict notice deadlines tied to the month in which labor or material was furnished, and Chapter 28, the Texas Prompt Payment Act, governs payment timing on private work. We do not practise law and we do not send notices or file liens. What we do is keep unpaid amounts organized by job, by tier and by month furnished, so the deadline calendar your attorney works from is driven by real accounting data rather than by a search through email.
A fair question if you already have a bookkeeper, a payroll service or a CPA who files the return. Here is the straight answer.
Most Irving contractors do not need new software. They need the platform they already pay for set up for construction and wired into the accounting, so compliance reporting falls out of the month rather than becoming a second job.
Most QuickBooks files we inherit were configured correctly for a business that sells products. For a contractor that means jobs are customers, cost codes do not exist, retainage hides inside accounts receivable, and payroll cannot produce a WH-347 without a week of manual rework. We rebuild the file around how construction actually bills and pays.
Is your QuickBooks file working against you?
If your project managers already hold budgets, commitments and change orders in a construction platform, the office should not be typing the same numbers a second time. We connect the field system to the accounting so the month does not open with an argument about whose figure is right.
One set of numbers that the field and the office both believe.
Once the systems talk to each other, reporting stops being a history lesson. These are the reports Irving contractors use to decide which packages to chase and which to leave alone:
See what this has looked like for other contractors in our construction accounting case studies.
Because Irving contains two markets with very different accounting shapes, and most contractors here work in both. Roughly six thousand acres of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport sit inside Irving city limits, so airfield, cargo, hangar and terminal work is local work, and it arrives with federal funding, Davis-Bacon wage rates, security badging and night phasing attached. A few miles east, Las Colinas produces corporate office fit-out and logistics construction on ordinary private terms. One company running both needs cost codes, payroll and billing that can tell the two apart. A general bookkeeper records the transactions but cannot separate them.
If the project is funded through the Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Program, yes. Federal law attaches Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage requirements to AIP-funded airport development, and contractors and subcontractors must pay the applicable wage determination and submit weekly certified payroll, normally on Department of Labor form WH-347. This surprises Texas contractors, because Texas has no state prevailing wage on private work and limited exposure on ordinary commercial jobs. The obligation follows the federal money, not the state. We track the wage determination per contract and generate WH-347 from the same payroll run that posts labor to job cost.
As direct job cost, because that is what they are. Working inside a secure airfield means every worker needs an airport security badge, which involves a fingerprint-based criminal history records check and a security threat assessment, and anyone without one has to be escorted by somebody who has one. Add movement area driver training, vehicle permits, and work windows that only open at night between the last arrival and the first departure. We build cost codes for badging, escort hours, shift premium and repeated mobilization so the bid for the next airport job is priced off real history instead of a guess.
Airport sponsors that receive Federal Aviation Administration funding must run a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program under 49 CFR Part 26, and prime contractors on those projects report actual payments made to certified DBE firms against the contract goal. The reporting is an accounting task, not a paperwork task, because it has to reconcile to your subcontractor ledger and your pay applications. We tag DBE subcontracts and payments at the commitment level so participation reporting is produced from the accounts payable records rather than reconstructed from memory at closeout.
Texas has no personal income tax, but most entities file a franchise tax report calculated on taxable margin rather than profit. Construction companies can generally elect the cost of goods sold deduction, and direct job costs such as labor, materials and subcontracted work are treated relatively favorably. The catch is documentary. The deduction is only as strong as the job cost records supporting it, so a contractor whose direct costs are mixed into general overhead in the ledger routinely understates the deduction and overpays. We structure the chart of accounts so the figures the report needs already exist.
Texas turns the answer on the contract type. Under a lump-sum contract the contractor is generally treated as the consumer of the materials and pays tax on purchases. Under a separated contract, where materials and labor are stated separately, tax is generally collected from the customer on the materials. Labor to repair or remodel nonresidential real property is generally taxable in Texas, while labor for new construction is not, which matters a great deal in Irving where office fit-out and re-tenanting work is common. The combined rate in Irving is 8.25 percent. We set invoicing to match the contract you signed.
Yes, and fit-out work needs its own cost discipline. Las Colinas holds one of the densest concentrations of corporate headquarters in Texas, including Kimberly-Clark, Fluor, Caterpillar, McKesson and Commercial Metals, and headquarters churn keeps interior contractors busy re-fitting space as tenants move in and out. That work runs on allowances, long submittal cycles, landlord work letters and change orders that are agreed verbally and priced later. We keep base building and tenant improvement scopes on separate cost codes and track unpriced change work as its own visible number so nobody discovers at closeout how much was built on a promise.
Texas lien rights sit under Property Code Chapter 53 and run on strict notice deadlines tied to the month in which the labor or material was furnished, so a missed month can quietly cost the claim. The Texas Prompt Payment Act under Chapter 28 governs payment timing on private work. We are not attorneys and we do not file liens or send notices. What we do is keep unpaid amounts organized by job, by tier and by month furnished, so your notice calendar runs off live accounting data and your attorney gets the backup the same day it is asked for.
We support contractors across Irving and the wider Metroplex, including Las Colinas, Valley Ranch, Hackberry Creek, the Heritage District in south Irving, and neighboring Coppell, Grapevine, Euless, Grand Prairie, Farmers Branch, Carrollton, Bedford and the airport corridor along State Highway 114, State Highway 183 and the President George Bush Turnpike. Our work is fully remote, so you get construction-specific accounting without paying for an office you would never visit. FinTruction is based in Coppell, Texas, which is about fifteen minutes from Las Colinas.
Start with the free Audit. Send your current accounting file, your job costing setup and your most recent WIP or job profitability report, and we come back with what is actually wrong, what it is costing you and what it would take to fix. There is no obligation and no charge for that. Pricing afterwards is a flat monthly fee based on transaction volume, active job count and reporting needs, so asking a question never starts a clock. Sahil Ahmad, CPA reviews the work rather than an offshore data entry pool.
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