Jonas Premier can help you tackle all three of those tasks—and many more—but construction accounting isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. If you’re looking for a complete HR system to support your growing employee base, CMiC could be a better option. There’s also COINS for extensive construction bookkeeping features, Buildertrend for great customer management, and Sage 100 Contractor for smaller contracting companies just getting underway. You can create invoices, take payments online, and set a basic budget, but that’s it. The software integrates easily with QuickBooks Online or Xero (both of which are great accounting picks), but both add an additional monthly fee. Plus, Buildertrend starts at an affordable $99 a month—but for the first two months only.

Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (CRE)

AIA contract stands for the American Institute of Architects contract. An AIA is a document that contains the completed contract billing throughout the entirety of the project. Many construction companies suggest a close review of an AIA billing contract bookkeeping for construction subcontractors to ensure that all parties involved are receiving equal advantages. Accountants everywhere cringe when they hear someone talk about deleting a transaction. Quickbooks makes it easy (too easy) to delete a check, an invoice, a journal entry, etc.

Record Day-to-Day Financial Transactions

Integrating construction-specific accounting software can be a game-changer. The right construction accounting software assists in unifying various aspects of financial management—from job costing to billing and comprehensive financial analysis. Choose a platform that complements the workflow and allows real-time updates.

Best for Managing Multiple Jobs

It should also offer at least the accounting basics, such as general ledger creation, estimating, and invoices. Construction accounting software performs project accounting specifically developed for construction projects. These solutions track financial data in real time while monitoring expenses (like the cost of materials and labor). Use software to streamline your revenue reports, invoicing, and payroll processes to stay on top of your company’s finances. In the realm of construction accounting, meticulous tracking and categorization of subcontractor expenses is imperative for maintaining robust cash flow and profitability. Accurate job costing hinges on the correct allocation of labor, materials, and indirect costs related to subcontractors.

Navigating Multiple Accounts and Entities

At year end, or whenever you do your financial statements, you will have to do some manual calculations to find out what your Retention Payable and Retention Receivable balances should be. Running reports and exporting them to Excel or another spreadsheet https://www.bookstime.com/personal-bookkeeping program will help make these calculations less confusing. Now that business is expanding, get tools to simplify new demands and set everyone up for success. Find help articles, video tutorials, and connect with other businesses in our online community.

• Bookkeepers must track accounts receivable diligently, keeping a close eye on the collection efficiency to maintain a steady flow of cash.
• Some are robust all-in-one systems that have everything from CRMs to project management tools built in.
• Today’s leading construction accounting platforms offer standard security features including data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more.
• The payroll module uses Davis Bacon wage rates and includes union fringe and state tax rates.
• You can use that bank statement to reconcile your transactions to make sure they match up with your own accounting system, invoices, payments, etc.
• QuickBooks Online Advanced gives you the tools to streamline your subcontractor business and the insights to drive it forward.

Distinguishing Between Direct and Indirect Costs

• In construction accounting, job costing supplements the company’s general ledger.
• If your company uses Work In Progress (WIP) reporting (used with percentage of completion accounting) to adjust your income to match actual costs, Quickbooks isn’t much help.
• Quickbooks says it can handle prevailing wage projects, but it is usually a matter of doing several workarounds to get it right.
• Payroll management systems should accommodate fluctuating labor allocations across projects, ensuring that labor costs reflect actual work performed.
• Using milestone payments also makes it easier to identify payment problems, which, in turn, enables you to stop working until you receive payment for a milestone.
• When you’re done with the preconstruction phase, you move into project management, operations and financials segments of the software that work concurrently.