Expert Quickbooks Construction Bookkeeping For Companies & Contractors
QuickBooks has no percentage-of-completion module, no billings-in-excess account, and no field for percent complete. A contractor still needs a work in progress schedule every month to know whether reported profit is real. Building that schedule by hand, inside a general ledger that was not designed for job costing, is where construction books in QuickBooks go wrong.
Construction Accounting Inside QuickBooks
What Changes When You Run This Vertical On This Platform
Where it breaks
QuickBooks builds no work in progress schedule
Percentage-of-completion accounting means profit reported each month depends on an estimate: cost incurred divided by total estimated cost, applied to contract value. QuickBooks has no field that stores percent complete and no report that compares billings to costs to produce over- or under-billing. Bookkeepers who do not build this by hand in a spreadsheet or job costing add-on end up reporting profit based on cash received and invoices sent, not work performed. A job that is billed well ahead of the work performed looks profitable and healthy in QuickBooks. It is neither. The gap surfaces at year end or when the job runs out of cash before it is finished.
How REA handles it
REA builds the schedule QuickBooks does not
REA sets up job costing in QuickBooks using Projects or class tracking, one job per class, so every cost and every progress billing rolls up to a single number. From that structure we build a work in progress schedule each month outside the general ledger: cost to date against estimated cost, contract value against billings, to isolate over-billing and under-billing separately. Retainage gets its own receivable account instead of sitting inside undifferentiated accounts receivable. Change orders are held out of job cost until approved, or flagged as unapproved cost if work starts early. Equipment purchases post to a fixed asset item, not an expense account.
What we check in your QuickBooks instance
- Job costing rolls up by class or project
- WIP schedule matches billings to cost incurred
- Retainage held in a separate receivable account
- Change order costs held until approval signed
- Equipment purchases capitalized instead of expensed
- Overbilling and underbilling reported as two lines
The Full Scope of the Engagement
Two Pages Carry the Detail
This page covers what is specific to running Construction books in QuickBooks. The complete service scope, process, and pricing conversation live on the two pages below.
The vertical
Construction Accounting
Full scope, monthly process, property types, FAQs and the team on the account.
See the Construction pageThe platform
QuickBooks Bookkeeping
What QuickBooks does well, where its accounting breaks, and how REA works inside your own instance.
See the QuickBooks page- 01
Trust Accounting
Tenant, owner, and security deposit money kept separate, tied out, and ready for a state audit at any time.
- 02
Bank Reconciliation Services
Every operating, trust, and escrow account reconciled on a fixed schedule, with the variances chased down rather than carried forward.
- 03
Accounts Payable & Receivable
Vendor invoices coded and paid, tenant receipts applied, management fees taken, and owner distributions cut on time.
- 04
Bookkeeping Cleanup & Catch-Up
Months or years of unreconciled books diagnosed, corrected, and brought current so the numbers you report are numbers you trust.
- 05
CAM Reconciliation
Common area maintenance pools built from the lease terms, reconciled against actuals, and billed or credited with a defensible tenant statement.
Experts In All Property Types
Residential, commercial and everything in between. The asset class changes what the books have to prove, and our teams are staffed accordingly.
- Single-Family
- Multifamily
- Student Housing
- Affordable Housing
- Community AssociationsSee the page
- CommercialSee the page
Check Out What Our Clients Have To Say About Us
Property Managers, Investors & Owner Operators
Day-to-day financial operations
REA and team have been nothing but excellent helping our firm with its day to day financial needs. Their expertise, professionalism, and timeliness have made our lives so much easier. We foresee a long relationship with REA and team.
Onboarding and responsiveness
Real Estate Accounting truly is a special company. They helped as if they were a part of our company, with the concern and caution as an employee would have, but even more. They quickly ascertained our needs and developed an effective team to help with our accounting needs. They were extremely responsive and always accurate. I would recommend their services to anyone who needs help with their property management accounting.
Smaller portfolio, still looked after
Adam the owner took a personal interest in my situation and was willing to work with me to see if his company was a good fit. I may be too small for them but I would highly recommend them to anyone considering a bookkeeper for their property management business.
230+
Property Accountants
30M+
Commercial Sq. Ft.
Up to 50%
Saved vs In-House
Every month
On-Time Close
Running Construction On Something Else?
Same Vertical, Different Platform
Frequently Asked Questions
We use QuickBooks Online for job costing. Can it actually produce a percentage-of-completion income statement?
Not on its own. QuickBooks Online can track cost and revenue by class or project, which gives you the raw numbers, but it has no built-in percentage-of-completion calculation and no over/under-billing report. REA pulls the job-level cost and billing data out of QuickBooks each month and builds the WIP schedule separately, then posts an adjusting entry back into QuickBooks so the income statement reflects work performed, not just what was invoiced or collected.
Should retainage sit in accounts receivable or somewhere else in QuickBooks?
It needs its own account, separate from regular accounts receivable. Retainage withheld by the customer is not collectible until the job closes out and often not until a lien waiver or final inspection clears, so lumping it into ordinary AR overstates what is actually collectible in the near term. REA sets up a dedicated retainage receivable account per job or per customer, and does the same on the payable side for retainage owed to subcontractors, so both are visible and neither gets forgotten at closeout.
Our field crew starts change order work before the paperwork is signed. How does that show up in QuickBooks?
By default, it doesn't show up as anything unusual. That is the problem. The labor and material costs post to the job like any other cost, so the job looks like it is running over budget on the original contract when part of that cost belongs to work that has not been billed yet. REA flags unapproved change order costs separately as they are entered, so the original contract's cost-to-complete estimate stays accurate and the change order can be billed once it is signed.
Ready for Accurate Construction Books in QuickBooks?
Schedule a call with our team to talk through your QuickBooks instance, what it is doing to your construction financials, and what REA would take on.