Bookkeeping for Contractors Cumming, GA

The single most common mistake we see in contractor bookkeeping around Cumming is books that show overall company profit but not job-level profit. A Cumming general contractor finishes the year with a profit on paper, but does not know which of the 14 jobs they ran actually made money. The two big remodels carried the year, the four small kitchens lost money on every line, and the contractor never sees that pattern. Next year they bid more small kitchens. Next year is worse.

Job costing fixes this. We set up your QuickBooks file with class tracking or project tracking (depending on your QuickBooks tier and complexity) so every transaction (income, materials, subcontractor labor, equipment rental, fuel, vehicle, even a portion of overhead) gets tagged to the relevant job. The job profitability report shows you actual gross margin per job within days of close-out, not at year-end with no time left to react.

For Cumming kitchen and bath remodelers, this changes how bids are written. The next $48,000 kitchen remodel gets bid based on actual recent kitchen remodel margins, not a gut-feel markup. Bids get tighter, win rates go up, and the jobs that do close make money.

For most Cumming trades and construction businesses, subcontractor relationships are central. A general contractor running a $35,000 bath remodel might pay six subs (plumber, electrician, drywall, tile, painter, finish carpenter). At year-end, every one of those subs needs a 1099-NEC if they were paid $600+ during the year, and many of them only carry liability insurance through whoever booked the job last.

We set up every new sub in QuickBooks the same week you start working with them: collect a W-9, verify the TIN against IRS records, request a current certificate of insurance with your business listed as additional insured, and flag the vendor as 1099-eligible. By the time November arrives, the 1099 prep step is just a print-and-file motion. Nobody is hunting down a sub in late January for a missing W-9.

For larger contractors with payroll W-2 crew alongside subcontractors, we coordinate the classification call carefully. Misclassifying a W-2 worker as a 1099 sub to save payroll tax is the single most common audit trigger for contractors, and the back tax plus penalties typically dwarfs the original savings. We help you make the right call on each new hire.

Construction and trades have an awkward cash cycle. You buy materials and pay subs in week one of a job. The customer pays you on a milestone schedule that might run weeks or months. The GC holds 10% retainage that does not release until the punch list is signed off, sometimes 90 days after substantial completion. Cash goes out fast, comes in slow, and the gap can sink a contractor whose books do not surface the timing clearly.

We set up progress billing inside QuickBooks tied to your contract milestones. Each draw becomes an invoice with the deposit, current draw, and retainage tracked as separate line items. The A/R aging shows you exactly how much is owed by milestone, and how much retainage is sitting at each GC waiting for release. We chase retainage on schedule so the cash actually comes back in the door, not just stays on the aging report forever.

Combined with cash flow management, this means contractors stop being surprised by the gap between revenue and cash. The 13-week cash forecast shows when material orders are due, when payroll runs, when sub payments need to clear, and when each draw and retainage release should hit. Decisions about taking the next job get made with the cash picture in front of you, not on faith.

Bookkeeping for contractors typically runs $625 to $2,000 a month for Cumming-area trades businesses depending on transaction volume, number of active jobs, payroll complexity, and how many integrations are in the stack (JobTread, Jobber, Skimmer, etc.).

For contractors who also need payroll processing for W-2 crew, accounts receivable management for retainage chase, and cash flow management for the cash gap, we usually quote a bundled monthly fee that comes in lower than the sum of the parts. Most Cumming general contractors and specialty trades businesses we serve fall in this bundled bucket.