Catch-up, cleanup and job-cost coding for Austin contractors who are behind
Most Austin contractors who reach out are behind. Nobody has closed a month since the last bookkeeper left, the QuickBooks file has jobs entered as plain customers, and no one can say whether the Westlake custom home or the East Austin fit-out actually made money. Growth caused it: crew count and job count climbed faster than the office did. Construction bookkeeping in Austin fixes that from the ledger up. We catch up the months nobody closed, recode cost to the right job and cost code, reconcile every account, and settle lump-sum or separated sales tax treatment at the purchase instead of at audit.
On the ground
The Texas State Capitol, Austin, Texas
Austin does not break a back office with complexity so much as with speed. Crews double, job count doubles, transaction volume triples, and the person doing the books at night stops being able to keep up. The failure is almost never dramatic. It is a month that never gets closed, then another one.
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.
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 work with contractors across Travis, Williamson, Hays and Bastrop counties, from custom home builders in the western hills to data center and campus subcontractors out toward Taylor and Manor.
Behind on the Books in Austin?
Get Your Free AuditIf the last closed month is somewhere behind you, this is where we start. We diagnose the file first, then rebuild the backlog month by month from bank statements, supplier bills and pay applications, because a bank feed alone cannot tell you which job a load of lumber went to. Sahil Ahmad, CPA signs off on the rebuilt structure before it goes live.
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 →
Job costing is not a report, it is a coding habit repeated a few hundred times a month. Every supplier invoice, card swipe, equipment rental and sub payment carries a job, a cost code and a sales tax decision. Get those three right at entry and the reports build themselves. Get them wrong and no amount of month-end effort recovers the detail.
Austin contractors pay a long list of subs and suppliers, and the compliance paperwork travels with the payment rather than arriving separately. We run payables so the documentation is collected before money moves, which is far easier than chasing a framing crew for a certificate in January.
On the receivable side the bookkeeping job is to get money out the door on time and to keep held money visible. Retainage goes into its own account at the moment the pay application is entered, and the aging is read against the Texas Property Code Chapter 28 payment clocks rather than a generic thirty day term.
Labor is the biggest number on most Austin jobs and the easiest one to lose. We process payroll so hours land on the job the same week they were worked, then close the month on a fixed date so your statements are a management tool rather than a history assignment. Certified payroll is produced from the same records where a job requires it.
Austin construction is unusual in that the biggest and the smallest work sit in the same city. Semiconductor and data center campuses out toward Taylor and Manor pull mechanical, electrical, low voltage and site contractors into long phased jobs with heavy documentation. At the same time the custom residential and remodel market in Westlake, Tarrytown, Barton Creek and around Lake Travis runs on relatively small contracts, and multifamily infill fills in East Austin, Mueller, the Domain and the South Congress corridor. A single Austin subcontractor can be invoicing all three in the same month.
That mix is a bookkeeping problem before it is anything else. A campus job wants cost split by phase and scope with backup retained. A custom home wants allowance tracking and selections billed against a schedule of values. A remodel wants change orders recorded as they are signed. Each one implies a different coding discipline, and the ledger has to hold all of them at once without collapsing into a single job supplies account.
Then there is growth itself. Suburban expansion through Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Leander, Pflugerville, Kyle and Buda means crews get added faster than back office capacity does. Transaction volume rises, subcontractor count rises, and the owner who used to reconcile on Sunday nights stops managing it. The file does not fail loudly. It just stops being closed, and six months later nobody can answer which of the last nine jobs actually earned anything.
That is a solvable problem, and it is solved at the point of entry rather than at year end. If you run a builder platform, our Buildertrend and QuickBooks bookkeeping work covers the residential side, and our Procore cost code cleanup service covers the commercial and industrial side. You can also see how this has gone for other contractors in our construction accounting case studies.
Lump-Sum Versus Separated Contracts: Texas Comptroller Rule 3.291 splits construction contracts into two sales tax treatments, and the split changes what your bookkeeper does with every supplier invoice. On a lump-sum contract the contractor is the consumer of the materials and pays sales tax to the supplier at purchase, so the tax lands in job cost. On a separated contract, where materials and labor are stated separately to the customer, the contractor is treated as a reseller, buys materials tax free under a resale certificate, and collects tax from the customer on the materials charge. This is a coding rule set per contract, not a year-end adjustment.
Taxable Labor on Nonresidential Repair and Remodel: In Texas, labor to construct a new improvement to real property is not taxable, and labor to repair or remodel residential real property is not taxable. Labor to repair, restore or remodel nonresidential real property is taxable. That means an Austin contractor doing a commercial tenant fit-out and a house renovation in the same week is applying two different tax treatments to two invoices, at a combined Austin rate of 8.25 percent once city and transit taxes are added. We set the treatment when the job is opened so nobody guesses at billing time.
Franchise Tax Records and the COGS Subtraction: Texas has no state income tax, but construction entities report to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts for franchise tax, with the annual report due 15 May. Texas Tax Code Section 171.1012 lets a company furnishing labor or materials for real property improvements subtract direct labor, materials and subcontract cost as cost of goods sold. The subtraction is only as strong as the coding beneath it. Direct job cost has to be separable from overhead in the ledger throughout the year, which is a bookkeeping discipline rather than a tax preparation task.
Licensing, Permits and Where Those Costs Belong: Texas issues no statewide general contractor license. Trade licensing runs through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for electricians and air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, and through the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners for plumbers. The City of Austin issues permits and applies extra review over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. Permit fees and impact fees belong on the job that triggered them. License renewals, continuing education, bond premiums and general liability belong in overhead where they feed the burden rate. Misplaced, they quietly distort both job margin and your next bid.
Worker Classification, 1099-NEC and Workers Compensation: The Texas Workforce Commission audits worker classification for unemployment tax, and Texas is the rare state where most private employers may choose not to carry workers compensation. Both facts land in bookkeeping. W-9s and certificates of insurance are collected before the first payment, expiry dates are tracked, vendor payment totals accumulate through the year for 1099-NEC filing at the current IRS reporting threshold, and whether you carry comp changes the burden rate applied to every hour of labor you post to a job.
Retainage and Prompt Payment Clocks: Texas Property Code Chapter 53 requires an owner to retain ten percent of the contract price during construction and for thirty days after completion, and it sets lien notice deadlines counted from the month in which labor or material was furnished. Chapter 28, the Texas prompt payment statute, generally gives an owner thirty five days from a written payment request and gives a general contractor seven days to pass payment down to subcontractors. We are not attorneys and we do not file notices. We keep the receivable data organized by job, tier and month so those deadlines run off real records.
Prevailing Wage and Certified Payroll Records: Texas has no general private prevailing wage law, but Texas Government Code Chapter 2258 requires prevailing wages on public works of the state and its political subdivisions, federally funded Austin work falls under the Davis-Bacon Act, and the City of Austin applies its own wage standards on certain contracts. The weekly burden is a payroll processing burden: correct classification, correct rate, fringe treatment and a filed report that has to equal the labor sitting in job cost. We produce both from one payroll run so they cannot drift apart.
A fair question when you already have a part-time bookkeeper or a general small business firm. Here is the honest version.
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."
Very few Austin contractors need new software. They need the software they are already paying for configured for construction and wired to the accounting file, so coding happens once and the office is not retyping what the field already entered.
Nearly every contractor file we inherit was configured for a business that sells products across a counter. For a builder that means jobs sit as flat customers, cost codes do not exist, retainage hides inside receivables, sales tax treatment is inconsistent between invoices, and payroll cannot land labor on a job without manual rework every week.
Not sure your QuickBooks file can be trusted?
If your project managers already log budgets, commitments, selections and change orders in a construction platform, the office should not be entering it a second time. Double entry is where Austin contractors lose both hours and accuracy, because the two versions never quite agree and somebody has to decide which one is right.
One coded transaction, entered once, agreed by the field and the office.
Once the file is rebuilt and the feeds are coded, the close stops being an event. These are the reports Austin contractors actually open, delivered on a fixed day rather than whenever the backlog allows:
When you need WIP, percentage of completion and surety reporting on top of this, that is our construction accounting service in Austin.
Yes, and it is the most common reason Austin contractors call. Catch-up starts with a diagnostic of the QuickBooks file: how many months are unreconciled, which bank and card accounts have never tied out, whether cost was ever posted to a job at all, and how much is parked in Ask My Accountant or an uncategorised expense account. From there we rebuild month by month from statements, bills and pay applications rather than guessing from the bank feed. What you finish with is reconciled accounts, cost sitting on the right jobs, and a close date you can actually plan around.
That is a contract decision with a bookkeeping consequence at every material purchase. Under Texas Comptroller Rule 3.291, on a lump-sum contract the contractor is the consumer of the materials and pays sales tax to the supplier at purchase, so the tax becomes part of job cost. On a separated contract, where materials and labor are billed as separate charges, the contractor is treated as a reseller of the materials, may buy them tax free with a resale certificate, and collects tax from the customer on the materials charge. Coding the same supplier invoice both ways across a year is how contractors end up paying tax twice or not at all.
Usually yes, and this is the distinction Texas contractors get wrong most often. Labor to build a new real property improvement is not taxable. Labor to repair or remodel residential real property is not taxable either. Labor to repair, restore or remodel nonresidential real property is taxable in Texas. So the same crew doing an office fit-out downtown has taxable labor, while that crew remodeling a house in Tarrytown does not. Austin sits at a combined 8.25 percent rate once the city and transit portions are added to the state rate. We flag which side of the line a job falls on when the job is set up, not when the Comptroller asks.
The Texas franchise tax is a margin tax administered by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, with the annual report due 15 May. A construction entity can elect the cost of goods sold subtraction under Texas Tax Code Section 171.1012, which lets a company furnishing labor or materials for real property improvements subtract direct labor, materials and subcontract cost from revenue. The election is only worth what the ledger can support. If direct job cost and overhead share the same accounts, nobody can separate them in May without estimating. We keep direct cost separable in the chart of accounts all year so the subtraction is documented rather than reconstructed.
Texas has no statewide general contractor license. The trades are licensed instead: the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation licenses electricians and air conditioning and refrigeration contractors, and the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners licenses plumbers. The City of Austin still issues the permits and runs its own review, and work over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone carries extra documentation. For bookkeeping the point is where those costs land. Permit fees and impact fees belong on the job that incurred them. License renewals, continuing education, general liability and bond premiums belong in overhead feeding the burden rate. Coded wrong, every bid understates what the work has to carry.
It can be. The Texas Workforce Commission audits worker classification for unemployment tax and the IRS tests it separately, so a crew paid on 1099 that works like employees is exposure on two fronts. Bookkeeping is where the control actually lives. We collect a W-9 before the first payment goes out, track certificates of insurance and their expiry dates, hold payment when a certificate lapses, and accumulate payments by vendor so 1099-NEC filing at the current IRS reporting threshold is a report rather than a January scramble. Texas is also the rare state where most private employers may go without workers compensation, which changes your labor burden and how sub insurance gets verified.
Retainage is entered as its own receivable the moment the pay application is recorded, not discovered at closeout. Texas Property Code Chapter 53 requires an owner to retain ten percent of the contract price during construction and for thirty days after the work is completed, and it sets lien notice deadlines counted from the month in which the labor or material was furnished rather than from the invoice date. Chapter 28, the Texas prompt payment statute, generally gives an owner thirty five days from a written payment request and gives a general contractor seven days to pass payment down. We age receivables against those clocks by job and by tier.
That is most of what we do on arrival. The usual contractor pattern is jobs entered as plain customers with no sub-customer structure, no cost codes, an items list nobody maintains, retainage buried inside accounts receivable, owner draws sitting in expenses, and every supplier invoice landing in one job supplies account. We rebuild the chart of accounts and the cost code list around the work you actually take, then recode history so prior periods stay comparable instead of being abandoned. Sahil Ahmad, CPA reviews the rebuild before it goes live, so what you end up with is a file a CPA and a lender will both accept.
Through payroll, which is where most Central Texas contractors lose job cost accuracy. Texas is a right to work state and the Austin market is overwhelmingly open shop, so the payroll problem here is not union fringe trusts. It is time allocation across fast moving jobs and crews that grew faster than the office did. We take time by employee, day and job, add the burden of payroll taxes, general liability and workers compensation if you carry it, and land the loaded cost on the job rather than in a company wide payroll account. Quarterly Texas Workforce Commission wage reporting is reconciled to the same payroll records.
Bookkeeping is the monthly machine: coding, reconciliations, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, retainage entry and a close that lands on a date. It answers what happened and which job it happened on. Construction accounting sits on top of that and answers what it means: work in progress schedules, over and under billing, percentage of completion, surety and bonding packages, tax planning and CFO level advice. Accounting is only ever as good as the ledger underneath it, which is why most contractors start here. Plenty of Austin clients run both, and many begin with catch-up and add the accounting once the file is trustworthy again.
FinTruction handles contractor bookkeeping for construction companies throughout Texas. Choose your city for catch-up work, QuickBooks cleanup and job-cost coding in your market.
Once the ledger is trustworthy, the next questions are WIP schedules, over and under billing, bonding capacity and franchise tax strategy. That is our construction accounting service for Austin contractors, and it runs on the same file we keep.
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Send us access to your QuickBooks file and your last bank statement. We will tell you how many months are genuinely unreconciled, how much cost is sitting on no job at all, and what it would take to bring it current. No charge and no obligation for the Audit.
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