9 Essential Steps for Setting Up a Construction Accounting System

With over a decade of editorial experience, Rob Watts breaks down complex topics for small businesses that want to grow and succeed. His work has been featured in outlets such as Keypoint Intelligence, FitSmallBusiness and PCMag. The first is the Essential plan starting at $199  for the first month, which then moves up to $499 per month. The Advanced plan starts at $499 for the first months, then increases to $799 per month. The Complete plan starts off at $799 for the first month, then goes up to $1,099 per month after that.

Jonas Enterprise

We like that this platform never costs more than $25 per month for access to quotes, estimates, invoicing and other basic accounting features. We appreciate that the platform is highly user-friendly, with its narrow suite of features, intuitive interface and low costs affordably streamlining your accounting fundamentals. Although Sage Accounting lacks valuable contractor time tracking tools, upgrading to Sage’s separate, higher-end Intaact platform gives you tools for building invoices from labor hours.

• The platform also integrates payroll processing, making managing employee wages and taxes easier.
• Dedicated construction accounting solutions bring in extra features like bid generation and field service management.
• Maintaining a healthy business also means learning how to correctly recognize and report your revenue.
• QuickBooks is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, though some larger companies also use it.
• QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is a good compromise between hefty software plans like Jonas Premier and generic cloud-based accounting software like FreshBooks or Xero.

The Best Construction Project Management Software

You can track budgets and expenses across multiple jobs, updating all financial data in real-time. Viewpoint Vista also offers compliance management, ensuring your projects meet industry standards. Our construction accounting team ensures seamless integration with existing workflows, provides real-time data insights, and ensures compliance with industry standards.

Finance & Accounting Related Services

• The platform’s breadth and depth across its packages make it the best choice for small construction firms.
• You’ll see the true pros and cons of each platform you’re considering from actual business owners who have used the software.
• Automated payment reminders and follow-ups ensure that construction businesses are constantly on top of outstanding invoices, without needing to dedicate hours to manual follow-up.
• You’ll also appreciate its huge network of QuickBooks ProAdvisors, making it easy for you to enlist professional help when needed.
• You can automate tasks like payroll and accounts payable, streamlining administrative work.
• Look for a solution that has a simple dashboard that allows you to access everything from the general ledger to reports with a few clicks of the mouse.

A refined understanding of WIP, job costing, IRS requirements, and more is required. From document management to sharing job status faster, integrated construction project management software has you covered. Browse integration listings or app stores on the websites of any vendors How to Use Construction Bookkeeping Practices to Achieve Business Growth you’re considering for your accounting software. Prioritize platforms that offer integrations with your key business software or access to an application programming interface for developing custom integrations.

Once in place, it will not only help you ensure your original estimate was correct but confirm you’ve accurately captured the scope of the project https://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/raheemhanan-deltona-fl/2024/12/How-Construction-Bookkeeping-Services-Can-Streamline-Your-Projects/2874359 based on what you’ve bid. Custom invoices provide this consistency and ensure your business can present a professional image. Here is a matrix outlining the integration capabilities of each AP software with popular construction accounting and ERP systems.

Best Practices for Construction Companies to Prepare for a GL Insurance Premium Audit

It’s hard to protect your margins on the job without being able to see how it’s performing in real-time. WIP reports make it easier to get an overview of each project’s budget, percent complete, actual costs to date, and more, so you can see if it’s overbilled or underbilled. Make sure you also develop a contingency plan for potential issues, including who to reach out to at your provider. Bill.com is widely used for automating AP tasks, offering ease of use and integration capabilities that are helpful for construction companies managing project-based expenses.

• All our picks for the best accounting software for contractors offer free trials of at least 14 days.
• Each plan offers the basics needed to run your construction business, including scheduling, daily logs and a to-do list.
• That’s because it delivers a deep feature set to support complex workflows with time and billing management, detailed job costing, and financial reporting.
• Change orders are made easy where you can manage all the moving parts of the change order to keep everyone in the loop on new requests.
• Review pricing pages to determine what features you get at which prices and how this compares across vendors.
• This is important because over or under-billing can greatly impact reported revenue, which will affect your numbers come tax time.

Buildertrend

Its feature-rich platform starts by allowing you to manage multiple companies where you differentiate projects. The whole system has bank integration so that you don’t have to waste time with time-consuming reconciliations. For construction businesses, managing accounts payable requires a unique blend of job-specific tracking, vendor management, and cost control. By selecting the right AP software, you can streamline these processes, reduce administrative time, and improve project profitability.

That’s why FreshBooks also has an excellent customer support team—no need to try and ‘talk’ to a chatbot or sift endlessly through self-help resources to get answers to your questions. Instead, give us a ring and talk to an actual human, ensuring you don’t have to deal with unnecessary downtime. Construction companies should use a percentage-of-completion method that recognizes both revenue and expenses as they are accumulated over time. It aligns with the project completion ratio and most lenders or guarantors require this. This is why it has flexible billion options, such as American Institute of Architects, time and materials and freeform billing. The software makes invoice routing easy and conveniently reconciles things with the GL when paid.

By offering so many features in one interface, Buildertrend minimizes wasted time, effort and energy that would otherwise be spent trying to bring a poorly optimized collection of apps to heel. All Sage products require a custom quote, so you’ll need to contact the sales team for pricing. With a simple design and an extensive collection of resources and tutorials to fill in the gaps, Sage users enjoy the experience of using the app.