Bookkeeping for Contractors and Trades in Northeast Indiana

You can't tell which jobs actually made money. Let's fix that first.

Most contractors I meet know their bank balance and know they're busy. What they can't tell me is which of last quarter's jobs made money and which one quietly ate the profit from the other three.

That's not a discipline problem. It's a bookkeeping problem. Contractor books break in specific ways — deposits recorded as income, change orders never billed, retainage sitting in the wrong account, subs paid without a W-9 on file, material costs landing in one big bucket called "Job Supplies." A generic bookkeeper using the default QuickBooks chart of accounts will keep those books tidy and still leave you blind.

I set QuickBooks Online up the way a construction business actually runs, then work the file every week so you know where you stand before the job is over instead of after.