Job coding, revenue split by locality, and a close that lands on a date
Your crew was in the City of Richmond on Monday, Henrico on Wednesday and Chesterfield on Friday, and not one of those is the same taxing locality. Every March somebody has to state how much you billed in each of them, and Virginia will not take a rounded guess. Underneath that, your rolling twelve month volume is quietly deciding which contractor license class you are entitled to hold. Both answers come out of one place: revenue coded to the jurisdiction where the work was physically performed, week by week. We set the books up that way from the first invoice.
On the ground
Downtown Richmond, Virginia from Shockoe Bottom
This is the piece most Central Virginia contractors are missing, and it costs nothing extra to do properly if it is done at billing rather than at deadline. Every contract carries the jurisdiction the work is physically performed in, so the license renewals are a report and not an argument.
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.
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Coding has to happen the week the cost lands or it never happens honestly. We post labor, burden, materials, equipment and subcontractor cost to the job and the code as it arrives, so a courthouse fit-out, a distribution shell and a Church Hill renovation each carry a real number instead of sharing one company profit and loss.
Virginia sets deadlines for paying subcontractors that run from your invoice date and from the day you were paid, and it no longer lets a contract make owner payment a condition precedent. That turns accounts payable into a dated sequence. We capture the dates as they happen so you can manage the clock instead of defending it.
State and local public work in Richmond can carry a prevailing wage obligation with a certification made under oath and a record retention requirement measured in years, not months. Whether or not a job is covered, the labor dollars in job cost and the payroll that was reported have to agree, because that is the first comparison anybody makes.
If you are months behind, or if a license renewal or a surety is about to read your statements, this is where we start. We rebuild from the last month that genuinely reconciles, correct the treatment of retainage and equity, and then close on a fixed date so nobody has to ask how old the numbers are.
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 reconcile a bank account. What they will not think to ask is which locality a dollar of revenue belongs to, whether this month just moved your rolling volume past a license limit, or whether the tax on that material invoice was a job cost or an accrual you still owe.
Central Virginia is unusually fragmented for the size of the market. Virginia has independent cities that sit outside any county, so the City of Richmond is not part of Henrico or Chesterfield, and neither of those is part of the other. Add Hanover, Goochland, Powhatan, New Kent, Charles City, Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Hopewell and the town of Ashland and a contractor with a twenty mile working radius is operating in eight or nine separate taxing jurisdictions. Every one of them wants its own business license and its own share of your gross receipts.
That is not a once-a-year problem, it is a coding problem. If revenue is only tracked by customer, there is no way to state what was billed in Chesterfield versus Hanover without opening every invoice in the file. So the March deadline arrives, somebody allocates by feel, and the company either overpays quietly or reports something it cannot support. Both are avoidable, and the fix costs nothing extra once the job record carries the jurisdiction from the day it opens.
The work itself compounds it. Richmond runs state government and courthouse projects, a large and continuous VCU and hospital program, distribution and logistics buildings along the I-95 and I-64 corridors, and a steady flow of renovation in older neighborhoods where the scope changes once the walls are open. That mix means public work with wage records, private work with none, and change orders that arrive faster than anyone codes them. The office that could keep up on five jobs starts slipping at fifteen.
The second cost is quieter. Your contractor license class in Virginia is tied to a rolling twelve month volume figure and, above Class C, to a net worth the board expects you to evidence. Books that are four months stale cannot tell you that you are about to outgrow your class, and they cannot produce a balance sheet a reviewer will accept. We do the catch-up, put the coding right, and keep the file current so both numbers are available on any given Tuesday. The same approach applied elsewhere is in our construction accounting case studies.
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 handle the day-to-day books for contractors across the City of Richmond and the surrounding counties, from mechanical crews on a hospital phase to remodelers working the older streets in the Fan and Church Hill.
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BPOL, a Local Tax on Gross Receipts: Virginia localities levy the business, professional and occupational license tax on prior year gross receipts, and it is administered locality by locality rather than by the state. The City of Richmond runs license renewal and the BPOL payment on a March 1 deadline and publishes a contractor rate of 19 cents per 100 dollars of gross receipts once receipts reach 250,000 dollars, with no tax on receipts for a business at 5,000 dollars or less, although flat fees can still apply by category. Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover and every other locality set their own rates and thresholds. The common requirement is a gross receipts figure per jurisdiction that you can stand behind.
Where a Contractor's Receipts Belong: The BPOL regulations site a contractor's gross receipts at the definite place of business where the services are performed. Where the contractor has no definite place of business in the locality, the receipts are attributed to the place of business that initiated, controlled or directed the work, unless Code of Virginia section 58.1-3715 applies, which it does once the business done in that locality exceeds 25,000 dollars in the license year. Above that line the locality can license you directly, and those receipts are then excluded from what any other locality taxes. The whole mechanism runs on revenue that was coded by jurisdiction when it was billed. It cannot be rebuilt reliably from a customer list.
License Class Limits, Measured Over Any 12-Month Period: Code of Virginia section 54.1-1100 sets three classes. Class C covers a single project over 1,000 and under 30,000 dollars, or under 250,000 dollars of work in any 12-month period. Class B covers a single project of 30,000 up to 150,000 dollars, or 250,000 up to 1 million dollars in any 12-month period. Class A is required at 150,000 dollars or more on a single project, or 1 million dollars or more in any 12-month period. The measure is a rolling window rather than a fiscal year, so a strong autumn can move you into a class you do not yet hold. That is a monthly report, and it is one almost nobody produces.
The Financial Test Behind the Class: The Board for Contractors regulations require a Class A firm to verify net worth or equity of 45,000 dollars, shown by a completed financial statement with supporting documentation, a financial statement reviewed by a CPA, or a CPA audit, with a 50,000 dollar surety bond on the board's form as an alternative. Class B carries a 15,000 dollar net worth requirement on the same evidence basis. In other words, somebody outside your company reads your balance sheet as a condition of the work you are permitted to take. Retainage sitting inside accounts receivable, unreconciled equity and owner draws recorded as expense all show up in that reading.
Prompt Payment and the End of Pay-If-Paid: Code of Virginia section 11-4.6 requires a contractor to pay a subcontractor the earlier of 60 days from receipt of an invoice for satisfactorily completed work or seven days after receiving the owner's payment covering that work, and provides that payment by the party contracting with the contractor is not a condition precedent to paying a subcontractor, subject to narrow exceptions such as insolvency. Interest penalties follow the state prompt payment provisions. Both sides of that live in your ledger: when your invoice went out, when the money came in, and when it went back out. Capture those three dates at entry and the rule manages itself.
You Are the Consumer of the Materials, at 6 Percent Here: Virginia generally treats a contractor as the consumer of tangible personal property it furnishes and installs in real property, so tax is settled at purchase and no sales tax is billed to the owner on that portion. The rate is not uniform. The Central Virginia region, which includes the City of Richmond along with Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, Goochland, New Kent, Powhatan and Charles City, carries a 6 percent combined rate where much of the state is at 5.3 percent. Where a supplier charged no Virginia tax, or where material is pulled from your own inventory, use tax has to be accrued. That accrual is the one almost nobody makes, and it is a coding rule, not a year-end adjustment.
Prevailing Wage on Public Works Above 250,000 Dollars: Under Code of Virginia section 2.2-4321.3 the prevailing wage requirement does not apply to a public contract for public works of 250,000 dollars or less, and localities may adopt ordinances applying it to their own projects. On covered work the contractor certifies its pay scales under oath at award, listing hourly wages and fringe benefits by craft, and wage records must be preserved for at least six years and produced to the department within 10 days of a request. Six years of retrievable payroll detail is a records discipline before it is a compliance one, and it is the reason we keep certified payroll tied to the job cost it came from.
A fair question when you already have someone doing the entry, or an office manager who has been carrying it alongside three other jobs. 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 Richmond contractors do not need another platform. They need the file they already own configured so a job, a locality and a cost code all come out of the same entry instead of three different guesses.
The files we inherit in Central Virginia were almost always set up for a company that sells products. Jobs are entered as customers, cost codes do not exist, there is nothing in the file recording which locality the work happened in, and retainage is sitting inside accounts receivable pretending to be collectible.
Is your QuickBooks file the reason nobody trusts the numbers?
If your project managers already track commitments, time and change orders in a construction platform, the office should not be typing it again. We connect the field system to the accounting file so entry happens once and the two sides agree at close.
One set of numbers the field and the office both believe.
Clean coding is not the point by itself. The point is a short list of reports you can run a Richmond construction company on, delivered on the same date every month:
When you want work in progress schedules and surety-ready statements built on top of these books, that is our construction accounting service for Richmond contractors.
Possibly, and the deciding number is revenue, not days worked. Virginia sites a contractor gross receipts at the definite place of business where the services are performed. If you have no definite place of business in that locality, the receipts fall back to the office that initiated, controlled or directed the work, unless you crossed the threshold in Code of Virginia section 58.1-3715, which is more than 25,000 dollars of business in that locality in the license year. Above that the locality can license and tax you directly, and those receipts come out of what you report at home so you are not taxed twice on the same dollar. None of that is answerable unless revenue was coded by jurisdiction as it was billed.
You watch it during the year rather than discovering it in February. We tag each contract with the locality the work is physically performed in, then run a receipts-by-locality report monthly. It shows where you already have a filing obligation, where you are close, and where the number is trivial. That report also settles arguments, because Virginia is full of independent cities that sit outside any county, so a job on one side of a street can belong to a completely different taxing jurisdiction than a job on the other side. Guessing at that in March is how contractors end up filing in the wrong place and paying twice.
Richmond runs business license renewal and the BPOL payment on a March 1 deadline, measured on the prior year gross receipts, and it publishes a contractor rate of 19 cents per 100 dollars of gross receipts that applies once receipts reach 250,000 dollars. Very small businesses, at 5,000 dollars of receipts or less, owe no tax on receipts although flat fees can still apply by category. Rates and thresholds differ in Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover and every other locality you work in, so the practical requirement is the same everywhere: a defensible gross receipts figure per jurisdiction, ready before the deadline rather than reconstructed after it.
They can cap what you are allowed to bid, which amounts to the same thing. Under Code of Virginia section 54.1-1100 a Class C contractor handles single projects over 1,000 and under 30,000 dollars, or under 250,000 dollars in any 12-month period. Class B covers a single project of 30,000 up to 150,000 dollars, or 250,000 up to 1 million dollars in any 12-month period. Class A is required at 150,000 dollars or more on one project, or 1 million dollars or more in any 12-month period. Note the phrase any 12-month period. That is a rolling figure, not your tax year, so it is a report your bookkeeping should produce every month.
For a Class A license the Virginia Board for Contractors regulations require a firm to verify net worth or equity of 45,000 dollars, evidenced by a completed financial statement with supporting documentation, a financial statement reviewed by a CPA, or a CPA audit, with a 50,000 dollar surety bond on the board form available as an alternative. Class B carries a 15,000 dollar net worth requirement on the same evidence basis. That means your balance sheet is read by somebody outside your company. Retainage buried inside receivables, an equity account nobody has reconciled since inception, or a shareholder loan recorded as income will all show up there.
Not as a blanket answer. Code of Virginia section 11-4.6 requires a contractor to pay a subcontractor the earlier of 60 days from receiving an invoice for satisfactorily completed work or seven days after receiving the owner payment covering it, and it states that payment by the party contracting with the contractor is not a condition precedent to payment of a subcontractor, with narrow exceptions such as insolvency. Late payment carries interest consistent with the state prompt payment provisions. We are not attorneys. What we do is capture the invoice date, the date the upper tier was paid and the date you were paid, so the conversation is about records rather than recollection.
Generally no, because Virginia treats a contractor as the consumer of the tangible personal property it furnishes and installs in real property. You pay the tax at purchase and the customer sees a contract price rather than a tax line. What that means in the books is that the tax is a job cost, and it is not the same everywhere: the Central Virginia region, including the City of Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, Goochland, New Kent, Powhatan and Charles City, carries a 6 percent combined rate against 5.3 percent in much of the state. Where a supplier charged no Virginia tax, or where material comes out of your own inventory, use tax has to be accrued at entry.
Usually, and the deadline is a good reason to start now rather than in February. We work forward from the last month that genuinely reconciles, bring bank, card and line of credit activity current, recode transactions to the correct job and cost code, split revenue by the locality the work was performed in, move retainage out of ordinary receivables and reconcile subcontractor payments. Most contractors five to twelve months behind are current in three to five weeks. Then we hold the file on a fixed monthly cycle, so next year the license renewals are a report you print rather than a project you dread.
We keep the books for contractors across the City of Richmond and Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, Goochland, Powhatan, New Kent, Charles City, Amelia and Dinwiddie counties, plus Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Hopewell and the town of Ashland. That patchwork of independent cities, counties and towns is exactly why revenue coding by jurisdiction matters more here than in states organized purely by county. Our bookkeeping is fully remote, so you get construction-specific coding and a real monthly close without paying toward an office and without anyone driving out to your yard.
Start with the free Audit. Send access to your current file and your last set of statements and we will tell you what is miscoded, how far behind you genuinely are, and whether your revenue can be split by locality well enough to support a license renewal. No charge and no obligation for that. Ongoing work is a flat monthly fee based on transaction volume, active jobs, payroll complexity and how many localities your crews work in, so asking a question does not start a clock. Catch-up is quoted separately and once. Sahil Ahmad, CPA reviews the work.
FinTruction handles construction bookkeeping across Virginia. Pick your city for job-cost coding, payables and monthly closes in your market, or see the statewide picture on our Virginia construction accounting page.
Bookkeeping is the coding, the locality split and the monthly close. Once those are dependable, our construction accounting service for Richmond contractors adds WIP schedules, percentage-of-completion revenue, surety-ready statements and Virginia tax planning.
Construction Accounting in RichmondWorking across the state? Construction accounting in Virginia
Send us access to your current file and your last set of statements. We will tell you what is miscoded, how many months are genuinely unreconciled, and whether your revenue can be split by locality well enough to survive a license renewal. No charge and no obligation for the Audit.
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