Job costing, WIP, and the wage question a private job can still trigger
A Syracuse job can be entirely privately owned and still be a prevailing wage job. New York Labor Law 224-a reaches private construction once total project costs pass five million dollars and public funds cover at least thirty percent, and the sales tax, mortgage recording tax and PILOT benefits an Onondaga County IDA deal carries are public funds for that test. Contractors bid the work at open shop rates, then meet a wage schedule, a state registration they do not hold, and certified payroll due every thirty days. We settle that question before the bid, not after the first pay period.
On the ground
Downtown Syracuse, New York
Central New York is being rebuilt on incentive money, and incentive money changes the rules a job runs under. That is a compliance problem, a payroll problem and a job costing problem at the same time.
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.
Two very large things are happening in Onondaga County at once. Micron broke ground in Clay in January 2026 on the first of four fabrication plants in a hundred billion dollar campus, and reporting through mid-2026 has the site running ahead of schedule as foundation work started. Downtown, the second and final phase of the I-81 viaduct project got underway in July 2026 under a 2.1 billion dollar contract, with the elevated 1.4 mile viaduct due to close to through traffic by the end of the year and the community grid built at street level in its place.
Neither of those is really the story for a local contractor, though. The corridor work is classic public work under state contract, and the campus itself operates under a project labor agreement with the Central and Northern New York Building and Construction Trades Council. Both of those have known rules. The story is the third thing, the ring of work being pulled in behind them: supplier and support facilities, industrial and warehouse space, utility and site infrastructure, housing, hotels and downtown conversions. Privately owned, privately contracted, and very often assembled with public money underneath.
That is precisely the profile Labor Law 224-a was written to catch. An industrial development agency package that abates property tax through a PILOT, exempts sales and use tax on materials and equipment and waives mortgage recording tax is not a small thing. Aggregate it against total project costs and a job that looks like ordinary private work can cross the thirty percent line on a project already over five million dollars. Nothing about the site tells you that. Only the funding stack does.
There is a second effect worth naming. When a region's subcontractor capacity gets absorbed by one campus and one corridor, a lot of Central New York contractors end up with an unusual share of backlog and receivables concentrated in very few places. That is good business and a real risk at the same time, and it is a risk you can only see if your books can tell you what share of your backlog sits with a single customer. Most files here cannot answer that question in under a week.
This is the service most Central New York contractors do not know they are missing. Before the number goes in, someone has to read the funding stack and answer one question: is this a 224-a covered project? Answered at bid time it is a line in your labor rate. Answered after the first pay period it is back wages, interest and a payroll rebuild.
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 →
New York moved certified payroll to electronic submission to the Department of Labor on a thirty-day cycle, and the rule reaches privately owned 224-a projects as well as classic public work. A payroll process that produced a paper transcript when someone asked for it does not survive that. We build the file out of live payroll data instead of rekeying it.
Every dollar you receive on a New York construction contract arrives as a trust asset, and Lien Law section 75 puts the recordkeeping obligation squarely on you as trustee. The part contractors miss is the consequence: not keeping the books is itself presumptive evidence of diversion. This is one of the few places where accounting failure creates personal exposure on its own.
Multi-year work on a corridor or a campus does not fail on the headline number. It fails on the costs ordinary job costing swallows: mobilization and demobilization between stages, night and weekend premium, maintenance and protection of traffic, winter protection and temporary heat, and unpriced change work that has already been built.
The work coming to Central New York is larger than the work most local contractors were built to carry, and sureties decide who gets to chase it. We prepare a monthly work in progress schedule comparing cost to date against the current estimate, calculate earned revenue on percentage of completion, and surface over and underbilling while there is still time to do something about it.
A regional buildout is a financial risk before it is an opportunity. Our controller services and CFO services cover what you can actually carry, what happens if one campus or one corridor slows down, and whether your working capital supports the bonding limit you want. Our construction tax planning ties the same numbers to the return.
We support contractors across Onondaga County and Central New York, from heavy civil crews on the corridor work to the trades building out industrial, institutional and residential space around it.
Running a Construction Company in Syracuse?
Get Your Free AuditA 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 |
Since January 1, 2022, construction performed under private contract has been subject to prevailing wage where public funds make up at least thirty percent of total construction project costs and those costs exceed five million dollars. Public funds are defined broadly enough to include savings from fee waivers, below-market interest, contingent loans, credits against repayment obligations and tax exemption benefits. Onondaga County IDA materials treat agency sales and use tax, mortgage recording tax and real property tax exemption benefits as public funds within the meaning of 224-a. Some funding is carved out, including brownfield remediation credits and historic rehabilitation credits.
New York seated a Public Subsidy Board at the Department of Labor to determine whether a privately contracted project is covered by 224-a. It takes requests, holds public hearings and issues determinations. Alongside it, the statute requires the owner or developer to certify under penalty of perjury, within five days of the start of construction, whether the project is a covered project. That certification is the document you want in your file before you sign a subcontract, because if it is wrong the wages still have to be paid and liability under the article can be joint and several.
Effective December 30, 2024, contractors and subcontractors must register with the New York State Department of Labor before bidding on or performing public work, and the requirement extends to private projects covered by Article 8, which includes 224-a covered projects along with the renewable energy, broadband and energy transition categories. Registration runs through the department online portal with a non-refundable 200 dollar application fee. Bidding while knowingly unregistered, or letting a sub start work you knew or should have known was unregistered, carries a fine of up to 1,000 dollars. Practically, it means registration is now a bid prerequisite for you and for every sub you carry.
Certified payroll on Article 8 covered work now goes to the Department of Labor electronically, and the department states submissions are required starting January 1, 2026 for covered work performed in 2026 and after. Records are due every thirty days from the project start date, and privately owned projects covered by 224-a are explicitly included. Electronic submission to the department satisfies the transcript requirement under section 220, though a department of jurisdiction can still impose its own contractual reporting on top. The practical consequence is that certified payroll stops being a document you assemble on request and becomes an output your payroll system has to produce on a schedule.
Funds received on a New York construction contract are trust assets, and section 75 requires the trustee to keep books or records for each trust, including a record showing the allocation to each trust where several share a bank account. Failure to keep those books or records is presumptive evidence that the trustee applied trust funds to a non-trust purpose. That is an unusually direct link between bookkeeping quality and personal exposure, and it is the reason we treat the trust record as a monthly close item rather than something to reconstruct if a claim ever lands.
The combined state and county sales tax rate in Onondaga County is 8 percent, and whether a job is a capital improvement or a taxable repair decides how the work and the materials are treated. New York handles the substantiation with Form ST-124, the Certificate of Capital Improvement, which the customer must give you within 90 days after the service is rendered. Properly completed and accepted in good faith, it moves the burden of proving the transaction was taxable onto the customer. Obtained at job setup it is routine. Chased during an assessment it usually is not obtainable at all.
A fair question if you already have a bookkeeper, or a CPA who does the return in March. Here is the honest answer.
Contractors who were behind, off the bank, or heading into an audit. Same work, different trades.
Rescue + Monthly
"They built a custom chart of accounts around how a remodeling company actually runs."
$1M+ Rebuild
"FinTruction rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, WIP, and retainage."
Most Syracuse contractors do not need new software. They need what they already pay for configured for construction, so a covered job, a trust balance and a job margin are all visible without a second system and a spreadsheet.
Most QuickBooks files we inherit were configured for a business that sells products. For a contractor that means jobs are customers, cost codes do not exist, retainage hides inside receivables, and nothing anywhere in the file records whether a contract is a covered project or how much of the cash on hand is trust money.
Is your QuickBooks file working against you?
If your project managers already track budgets, commitments and change orders in a construction platform, the office should not be typing it in again. We connect the field system to the accounting so the numbers agree and 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 are connected, reporting stops being a history lesson. These are the reports Central New York contractors use to decide what to chase and what to walk away from:
See how we have done this for other contractors in our construction accounting case studies.
Yes, and this is the single most expensive thing upstate contractors get wrong. New York Labor Law 224-a applies prevailing wage to construction performed under private contract when total project costs exceed five million dollars and public funds make up at least thirty percent of those costs. The owner is private, the site is private, and the wage schedule still applies. It took effect for contracts executed on or after January 1, 2022, so it is no longer new, but plenty of bids around Onondaga County are still priced as though it does not exist.
The statute is broad. It reaches direct payments, savings from fees, below-market interest, contingent loans, credits against repayment obligations and tax exemption benefits. That is why industrial development agency deals matter so much here: the sales and use tax exemption, the mortgage recording tax exemption and the property tax abatement inside a PILOT are all financial assistance that can count toward the thirty percent. Onondaga County IDA documents say so directly, treating agency benefits as public funds within the meaning of 224-a. The statute also lists things that do not count, including brownfield remediation tax credits and historic rehabilitation tax credits.
New York created a Public Subsidy Board, seated at the Department of Labor, to determine whether a privately contracted project falls under 224-a. It reviews requests, holds hearings and issues determinations. Separately, the statute puts a duty on the owner or developer: they must certify under penalty of perjury, within five days of the start of construction, whether the project is a covered project. As the contractor you are not the one certifying, but you are the one who has to pay the wages if the answer is yes. Get the certification in writing before you sign.
Several, and they are worth reading rather than guessing. Work performed under a pre-hire collective bargaining agreement or project labor agreement is excluded from the covered project definition. So are one and two family owner-occupied dwellings, buildings with four or fewer dwelling units, projects for not-for-profits under a revenue threshold, certain affordable and supportive housing, small renewable energy systems, small business fit-outs under ten thousand square feet, and short school leases. The mix on a single deal decides it, which is why we look at the funding stack at bid time rather than after the first pay period.
Yes. Labor Law 220-i created a public work contractor and subcontractor registry at the New York State Department of Labor, effective December 30, 2024. Contractors and subcontractors must be registered before submitting a bid or starting work on public work, and the requirement extends to private projects covered by Article 8, including 224-a covered projects. Registration goes through the department online portal with a non-refundable application fee of 200 dollars. Bidding while unregistered, or letting an unregistered sub start, carries a fine of up to 1,000 dollars. Registration status is now a prequalification item, not paperwork.
Electronically, to the Department of Labor, and on a clock. Labor Law 220-j requires contractors and subcontractors on Article 8 covered work to submit certified payroll records electronically to NYSDOL, and the department says submissions are required starting January 1, 2026 for covered work performed in 2026 and after. Records go in every thirty days from the project start date, and privately owned projects covered by 224-a are included. Departments of jurisdiction can still impose their own contractual submission requirements on top. If your payroll cannot produce that file cleanly every month, that is a system problem, not a clerical one.
More than most contractors realize. Article 3-A makes construction funds you receive trust assets, and section 75 requires the trustee to keep books or records for each trust. Where funds from separate trusts sit in one bank account, the record has to show the allocation to each trust. The teeth are in the same section: failure to keep those books or records is presumptive evidence that the trustee applied trust funds to a purpose outside the trust. In other words, bad recordkeeping does not just look careless, it shifts the burden onto you, and diversion exposes principals personally. We build the trust record as part of the monthly close.
Less directly than most people assume, and more indirectly than they expect. Work on the campus itself runs under a project labor agreement with the Central and Northern New York Building and Construction Trades Council, so wages there follow the agreement and union hiring halls. The accounting pressure lands on the ring around it: supplier and support facilities, industrial and warehouse space, housing and downtown conversions, most of it privately owned and a lot of it incentive-assisted. That is exactly the profile 224-a was written for. Backlog concentration also becomes a real risk when one campus absorbs a region of subcontractor capacity.
The combined state and county rate in Onondaga County is 8 percent, and the question that decides the treatment is whether the work is a capital improvement or a repair. New York uses Form ST-124, the Certificate of Capital Improvement, and the customer has to give it to you within 90 days after the service is rendered. Accepted in good faith and properly completed, it shifts the burden of proving the job was taxable onto the customer. Chased two years later during an audit it is worth very little. We capture it at job setup and file it against the job.
Start with the free Audit. Send your current file and your last WIP or job profitability report, and we will tell you what is wrong, what it is costing you, and whether your wage and trust documentation would hold up if someone asked. No obligation. After that it is a flat monthly fee based on transaction volume, active jobs and reporting needs, so asking a question does not start a clock. Sahil Ahmad, CPA reviews the work. We are fully remote, which means Central New York contractors get construction-specific accounting without paying toward an office.
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If the wage question is already settled and it is the close that keeps slipping, we also run day-to-day construction bookkeeping: cost-code coding, reconciliations, AP and AR, and job-cost entry every month.
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