Free 48-Hour Construction Audit

Inside the audit

What our audit finds.

Six things we take apart, line by line, before we write a word of the report.

Your chart of accounts

Most contractor files run on the generic setup QuickBooks ships with, built for a shop, not a jobsite. We find the duplicate accounts, the buckets that mean nothing, and the job costs sitting where no report will ever look for them.

The sync between your books and your software

Procore, Buildertrend, Knowify, JobTread, ServiceTitan. We check line by line what actually reaches your accounting and what quietly falls through. A job can read “Synced” and still be missing six figures of cost.

Job costing

Whether every dollar of labor, material, and sub cost lands on the job that caused it, or gets swept into one pile at the end of the month. If it does not, you cannot say which jobs pay you and which ones you are financing.

Margins, job by job and trade by trade

Your real gross margin against what your kind of work should actually run. A margin that looks too good is not a good year. It almost always means costs are parked in the wrong place.

Job cost versus overhead

The split almost every contractor gets wrong. Job costs booked as operating expense make gross profit look strong and hide the jobs that lost money. We put every cost back on the right side of the line.

Bonding and lender-ready financials

Whether your WIP schedule, retainage, and balance sheet would survive a surety or a bank asking to see them. Most would not, and owners tend to find that out the week they need the bond.

The deliverable

Here is what we sent back on a recent audit.

Actual pages out of the reports contractors got from us. Client details removed, numbers untouched.

One recent audit uncovered

$130,000+

in job costs missing from a project that showed as “Synced” in QuickBooks. Hidden in plain sight until the audit pulled it out.

Audit page titled Where Your Margin Is Hiding, showing reported gross margin of 6.6, 6.3 and 7.0 percent across three years and the three causes behind it — Where the margin went
Gross margin of 6.6%, 6.3%, then 7.0%.

Thin, and bouncing year to year. The audit page names all three reasons the number could not be trusted: costs in the wrong account, job progress never tracked, depreciation never recorded.

Audit finding showing cause, consequence, recommendation and reference rows for revenue recorded across three non-standard accounts — How a finding is written
Every finding: cause, consequence, fix.

No jargon and no vague warnings. This one traces $1.5M of revenue sitting in three accounts that describe nothing, and states exactly how it gets split by service line.

Audit page titled Our Recommended Plan listing seven phases with what we do and why it comes in that order — You also get the fix
A phased plan, in order, with the reason for each step.

The report ends with the plan: rebuild the chart of accounts, fix cost coding, link QuickBooks to Procore, track job progress monthly. Yours to run with, whoever does the work.

Real pages from delivered audits. Client and project details removed.

From real free audits

A few things we have pulled out of contractors' books.

Every one of these came out of a free 48-hour audit. Client details removed.

Job costs

Two overlapping charts of accounts running at once. The same cost could post to either set, so no account held the full amount and gross margin could not be trusted.

WIP

WIP accounts frozen at identical balances across two years. No WIP was computed, so profit was overstated and the surety schedule was out of date.

Overbilling

Billings in excess of cost booked as income and as a liability, at different amounts. Revenue and profit both overstated.

Retainage

A Retainage Payable balance that had not moved in three years. A carried-forward plug hiding payables the contractor still owed.

Cash flow

$174K of cash consumed in a year the books showed a profit. Receivables-driven, and masked by the bank balance.

Revenue

Revenue split across Sales, Income, and Uncategorized Income. No way to see which stream actually made money.

Every one of these was written up the way you saw above: what caused it, what it costs you, and how it gets fixed.

Client turnarounds

This is what before and after looks like.

Each of these contractors came in on a free audit, read what we found, and kept us on monthly. Their books today, against the books we walked into.

Moonz General Contracting

Remodeler · South Portland, Maine

Before After Total assets on the books −$85,827 $52,447 Checking, books vs. the bank ~$129K off Reconciled Money left uncategorized ~$12K $0 How the owner paid himself W-2 payroll Owner draws

Hearth & Haus

Custom homebuilder · Texas coast

Before After Transactions stuck in the backlog 500+ 0 Job-cost categories to track projects 0 52 Revenue lines of business tracked 1 lump 3 clean Income recognition Overstated Investor-grade

ProperCoat Painting

Painting contractor

Before After Equipment wrongly expensed $30K Capitalized Transactions recategorized $70K+ Cleaned up Depreciation All in one year Spread over 5 years Job costing None Weekly, off his own software

How it works

Two steps. Then your report.

No wizard, no runaround.

1

We get on a call

Around 30 minutes on your setup and how you run jobs. Then you add us as an accountant user in QuickBooks and give us view access to your construction software. Nothing to prepare first.

Your 48-hour clock starts here

2

Within 48 hours, your report lands

Every finding with what caused it, what it is costing you, and how it gets fixed, plus a phased plan. Yours to keep, whether you hire us or hand it to your bookkeeper.

48-hour turnaround

After the audit

What contractors say once they see it.

Real reply after a client received their audit. Identifying details removed.

“This is such great information. I’ve forwarded it along to our owner and management team. I’m very hopeful to move forward with you!”

Response from a controller at a commercial GC after receiving their audit.

Dalton Mayberry

Owner · ProperCoat Painting

The team cleaned up my books and set up job costing that gives me accurate, timely numbers every week. Reliable, and very detailed.

Verified Google review

Carl Moore

Owner · Hearth & Haus

FinTruction rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, WIP, and retainage.

Clay Pearson

Owner · C. Pearson Contracting, Orlando FL

I had no financial structure at all. No job costing, no WIP, books behind. They did a full cleanup and set up job costing and WIP inside QuickBooks. Now I know what is billed, what is owed, and where each job stands.

Verified Google review

Across the construction books we have cleaned up

$1.4M+

Revenue cleaned & correctly classified

500+

Transactions reviewed & reconciled

25+

Construction businesses on the books

5.0

Average Google rating

Client testimonial

Hear it from a contractor, not from us.

A couple of minutes with an owner we support, on what changed once his numbers finally made sense.

An owner telling it in his own words
From guessing to numbers he actually trusts
Why he recommends us to other contractors

The questions you are already asking.

Everything contractors ask us before they hand over their books.

Is this really free? What is the catch?

No catch. Some contractors read the report and hire us to fix what we found. Some fix it themselves, or hand it to their bookkeeper. Either way you keep the report. That trade works for us.

Who sees my numbers?

Your books go to the analyst working your audit, and nobody else. For QuickBooks you add us as an accountant user, and you can remove that access the day your report lands.

How much of my time does this take?

One call to walk through your setup and get access. Then we do the work. Your report is back in your inbox within 48 hours.

I already have a bookkeeper. Does this still help?

Yes. The audit shows exactly what is off, whether you keep your bookkeeper or not. A lot of owners use it as a second set of eyes on work they are already paying for.

Do you really know which jobs make you money?