Construction Bookkeeping Services: What to Hire For

Quick Answer: Construction bookkeeping services do everything a general bookkeeper does, plus the contractor-specific work: costing every expense to a job, keeping a work-in-progress schedule, preparing progress billings with retainage, tracking subcontractor paperwork and 1099s, and producing certified payroll on prevailing wage jobs. Hire one who has done this for contractors your size, and ask how they price active jobs and payroll before you sign.

A general bookkeeper can keep a contractor's bank accounts reconciled and still miss the numbers that decide whether the company survives: which jobs are losing money, how much retainage customers are holding, and whether billings are ahead of or behind the work. A construction bookkeeping service is worth paying for when it delivers those numbers every month.

What do construction bookkeeping services cover that general ones don't?

Most of the difference sits in a handful of recurring deliverables. Use this table as a scope checklist when you compare proposals.

If you want to understand how job costing and retainage work in the books themselves, the do-it-yourself version is in accounting for a small construction business. This guide is about buying that work from someone else.

Progress billing and the AIA forms

Many commercial owners and lenders expect pay applications on the American Institute of Architects forms. AIA describes its G702 Payment Application and Certificate for Payment as the contractor's structured request for a progress payment, documenting the contract sum to date, work completed and stored, retainage, previous payments, change order summaries and the amount now requested, which the architect then certifies. The G703 is its continuation sheet, the schedule of values that breaks the contract into line items. AIA also sells companion forms such as contractor's affidavits of payment and release of liens, and conditional and unconditional lien waivers.

A specialist should be able to build the schedule of values from your estimate, roll it forward each period, and reconcile billed-to-date with the job cost report. Ask whether they prepare the pay app or only record it after you send it.

Certified payroll on prevailing wage jobs

On federal or federally assisted construction contracts, the Department of Labor's page on Form WH-347 says covered contractors and subcontractors must submit payroll information weekly under the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts regulations. Each weekly payroll carries a signed Statement of Compliance confirming it is accurate and that workers received at least the required prevailing wage rates, including fringe benefits. The WH-347 itself is optional; other formats are allowed as long as the required information is there. Payrolls go to the contracting agency, or to the applicant, sponsor or owner that keeps records for the funding agency.

This is the task that most separates specialists from generalists. Weekly reports, worker classifications by trade, and fringe benefit math are easy to get wrong, and a signature attests to them. If you bid public work, confirm the service has prepared certified payroll before, and ask who signs it. State and local prevailing wage programs can have their own forms.

How do construction bookkeepers price their services?

Expect the same three models as other bookkeeping, monthly, hourly or per project (compared in bookkeeping services for small business: cost and choice), but with construction-specific price drivers. When two quotes differ a lot, the gap is usually in one of these:

• Number of active jobs. Job costing and WIP work scale with jobs open at once more than with total revenue.
• Payroll. Field payroll with job allocation costs more than an office payroll, and certified payroll is often priced per weekly report or per project.
• Pay applications. Some services include draws; others charge per pay app or per job.
• Subcontractor volume. Collecting lien waivers and insurance certificates for dozens of subs takes real time.
• Cleanup. If jobs were never coded, the first months are a catch-up project. Our catch-up bookkeeping guide explains how those quotes are built.
• Software. A provider who needs to migrate you into construction software will price the setup separately.

Get each quote broken out by these lines. A low flat monthly fee that excludes pay apps and certified payroll can end up costing more than a higher fee that includes them.

What questions should you ask before hiring a construction bookkeeper?

1. Which trades and contract types do you work with now? A residential remodeler, a commercial GC and a specialty sub have different billing and payroll patterns.
2. Can I see a sample job cost report and WIP schedule? Redacted samples tell you more than a sales call.
3. What is your monthly close date? Job cost numbers delivered six weeks late cannot change decisions on a live job.
4. Who prepares pay applications, and how fast? Late pay apps delay cash.
5. Have you prepared certified payroll, and who signs the Statement of Compliance?
6. How do you handle retainage and change orders in the books? You want them tracked per job, not netted out.
7. What software do you use, and do I own the file? If you leave, you should keep the company file and the history.
8. Do you work with our CPA on revenue recognition and taxes? Long-term contract tax methods are a tax professional's call, so the bookkeeper should hand clean WIP data to whoever makes it.

Red flags: no construction clients they can name, no idea what a WIP schedule is, or a quote that never asks how many jobs you run.

What should you hand over to a new construction bookkeeper?

The first weeks go faster, and the cleanup bill shrinks, when the provider gets everything at once:

• Bank, card and line-of-credit statements for every account, back to the last month that was reconciled. If some are only PDFs, QuickBankConvert turns them into CSV or Excel rows (or QBO for QuickBooks on paid plans, see pricing) so the bookkeeper can code them to jobs instead of retyping. Statements carry the supply house charges, equipment rentals and sub payments that job costing needs.
• Contracts and estimates for every open job, with the schedule of values if there is one.
• Signed change orders, approved and pending.
• Past pay applications and what each customer has paid and is holding as retainage.
• Subcontractor files: W-9s, insurance certificates, lien waivers, and payments to date.
• Payroll reports with hours by job, plus any certified payrolls already filed.
• Loan and equipment records: notes, leases and the equipment list.

If you have been tracking jobs in a spreadsheet, hand that over too. A construction cost tracking spreadsheet with committed costs and change orders gives the bookkeeper a head start on the budget side.

Sub totals matter at year end. The IRS instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC say the reporting threshold for certain payments rose to $2,000 for tax years beginning after 2025, and may be adjusted for inflation from 2027. Make sure the service tracks each sub's year-to-date payments by tax year rather than by job.

When is a construction specialist not worth it?

A one-person handyman business with small jobs paid on completion, no retainage and no employees may not need job costing beyond a column in a spreadsheet. A general bookkeeper, or your own monthly routine in QuickBooks or Xero, can cover that. The specialist earns its fee when you have several jobs open at once, bill in stages, carry crews, or bid public work with prevailing wage requirements. If you are unsure, ask a specialist to review three months of your books and tell you what they would change.

Bookkeepers serving contractors can also find tools for their side of the work on our page for bookkeepers.

Related guides

• Accounting for a small construction business
• Construction cost tracking spreadsheet in Excel
• Bank statements for a construction loan
• Catch-up bookkeeping